These letters were not written by me. I don't have a husband and never studied in Seminary...
I write this as one who worked in the chinuch world and left, and whose husband left, too. I want to offer our differing perspectives.
My dream was to be a teacher. I loved people, I loved to teach, and I was creative. My goal in choosing a seminary 20 years ago was to find one that offered the best teacher training possible. There was no other job I wanted.
I landed a fantastic teaching job right out of seminary and my pay was… $200 a week. I supplemented by tutoring and all was great. I got married and continued to teach. We moved to another neighborhood and I was fortunate to get a job there quickly. I got $230 a week and by year three I was writing curriculum guides for the parallel classes and was getting paid $320 a week.
We were not making ends meet and so both my husband and I began tutoring. Five years into my teaching (and now making $1,350 a month), my husband applied to and got a rebbi position. His starting salary: $3,300 a month. That was my first impetus to leave. I had five years’ experience and was making 60 percent less than my husband was being offered on a starter salary. No go.
Additionally, childcare expenses were growing — this made no financial sense. I was approached by a company that wanted someone with my background in education to assist with a new project. My new salary was only about 25 percent more, but the hours were shorter and I wouldn’t have to stay up late marking tests.
I stayed at that job for nearly a decade before pivoting an education-minded nonprofit. My current salary is about four times what my colleagues who stayed in teaching are currently getting.
My husband’s journey was different. He taught and loved his talmidim, but had a challenging time with principals who thought he should just take techniques that worked for kitah gimmel and try to apply them to eighth grade. My husband felt differently and developed new approaches. The students were growing, the parents were thrilled — but the menahel did not like the chiddushim.
My husband kept at it and tried to ignore the menahel’s criticism, but the stress ate at him slowly. A decade in, he left. He realized that he wanted to still deal with children and teens but the classroom was too confining and so he went to school, got a master’s degree in social work — and found that the clinics are full of men like him in their thirties, forties, and fifties who were rebbeim and realized if they wanted flexible hours, better pay, and the ability to still interact with children… this was the way to go.
After a recent meeting with some mental-health professionals with a background in chinuch, these men realized that they’d made their career shift due to feeling their wings were clipped, feeling they couldn’t continue a life that required six days a week in the classroom with nearly no breaks plus work at home… and a general lack of positive feedback from the hanhalah.
After my husband shared this with me, I spoke to many of my friends who, like me, have left the field. I found that we had different motivations for leaving. For us it was almost always about money, money, and money. Girls’ morahs are not just underpaid — they are underpaid even by our yeshivah standards, because schools are willing to hire young girls looking for experience at any price. As that pool narrows, my hope is that schools will show appreciation to their staff and retain them more.
A year ago I was asked to sub a high school class for six weeks. The time frame was outside of my work hours and so for the kicks of it, I did it. I absolutely loved it. Teaching has an addictive edge to it when it is your passion. But there is no way I could devote my life to teaching and still make ends meet.
REALITY CHECK › An idealistic but struggling teacher
As a teacher, I have long ago made peace with the fact that teaching doesn’t equal financial security.
“But if someone did the math and realized a career in chinuch didn’t add up to support a frum lifestyle, that would be a crime…And if the bottom line is what’s keeping our best and our brightest away from klei kodesh…” If someone did the math? Maybe it’s just that the best and brightest of Klal Yisrael are smart enough to realize that a full-time teaching job from 8:30 to 4:00 (with after-hours grading, lesson planning, student meetings, parent meetings, teacher meetings, PTA, and report cards) and a $40K pre-taxes salary cannot support a family of any size. Realistically, most morahs and teachers work half a day, so that’s a nice gross $20K to support the family. And if you’re single, in some places you can expect a whopping $12K — for the entire year. I know, because I made that much for several years as a single teacher.
And as a married educator (Young! Energetic! Idealistic!) with a master’s degree in education and with over ten years of experience, I currently make a measly $21K. I supplement that income with tutoring, running camps, working on Sundays, and, no, my husband can’t stay in kollel. He works full-time, too.
Does chinuch add up to support a frum lifestyle? No. Is it a crime? Yes.
So where have all the good teachers gone? Anywhere else.
