The rewards and dissatisfactions of teaching

Many of the proposed reforms of the teaching profession emphasize the importance of salaries and status in attracting people to the profession, but actual studies of teacher satisfaction consistently suggest that interacting with students provides the greatest reward for teachers. The issues of teacher salaries and status are more clearly highlighted in comparisons between American and Japanese teachers. A 1987 report prepared for the U.S. Office of Education, Japanese Education Today, states that, in general, Japanese educators have a much higher status in their society than educators in the United States. For instance, elementary school principals in Japan have a higher status than department heads of large corporations, public accountants, and authors. And, surprisingly when compared with the United States, elementary-school teachers in Japanese society have a higher status than “civil and mechanical engineers, white-collar employees in large firms, and municipal department heads.” University professors were ranked above physicians and just below court judges and presidents of large corporations.

According to the report, a Japanese high school teacher with a bachelor’s degree had a starting salary 15 percent higher than that of a starting white-collar worker with a similar degree and 12 percent higher than the starting salary of an engineer. The report states, “First-year teacher salaries are generally higher than those of other professions such as businessmen, engineers, pharmacists, etc” In contrast, A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century reports that the median weekly income of American teachers was slightly below that of mail carriers and slightly above that of plumbers. Ranking above American teachers in median weekly earnings were attorneys, engineers, chemists, systems analysts, and accountants.

Low salaries continue to be source of complaint among U.S. schoolteachers. In 1992, the average teacher’s salary in the United States reached an all-time high of $34, 213. There is a great deal of variation between states in the average teacher’s salary, with Connecticut having the highest average of $47, 510 and South Dakota having the lowest average of $24, 495.

While salary remains an important issue, teachers rate interaction with students as the most important source of job satisfaction. A major complaint about the organization of American schools is that the organization itself interferes with the relationship between students and teachers. For example, Dan Lortie, whose study Schoolteacher: Л Sociological Study is the most complete report on the social world of the teacher, surveyed teachers in Dade County, Florida, and found that the reward from teaching identified most often by teachers was “knowing that I have reached students and they have learned.”

For the purposes of his study, Lortie divided teacher rewards into extrinsic, psychic, and ancillary. Extrinsic rewards are those associated with salary and community status. Psychic rewards are associated with the psychological satisfaction derived from the job. Ancillary rewards refer to security of position, summer vacation time, and freedom from competition.

Of the more than 5, 800 teachers included in Lortie”s survey, over 76 percent gave top priority to the psychic rewards of teaching. Only 11.9 percent selected extrinsic rewards, and 11.7 percent chose ancillary rewards. The choice given teachers with regard to psychic rewards ranged from the “knowing that I have reached students...” statement to “chance to associate with other teachers.” “Knowing that I have reached students...” was selected by 86.1 percent of the teachers as the most important psychic reward. The second choice, “chance to associate with children or young people, ” was selected by 8 percent of the teachers in the survey.

An aspect of psychic rewards that Lortie did not include in this particular survey, but to which he has given reference throughout his study of American schoolteachers, is the psychic reward experienced by teachers through the exercise of creative autonomy in the classroom. It has been estimated that teachers make over two hundred decisions an hour in their classrooms. These decisions range from curricular and teaching problems to behavioral problems. Compared to the routine of some factory and office jobs, the autonomy and creative decision making required of teachers attracts many individuals to the profession. This particular psychic reward has also led to conflict when administrators and other agencies outside the classroom have attempted to control the behavior of teachers. This threat to the independence of teachers may be one of the reasons for the rapid growth of teachers’ unions.

The ancillary rewards of teaching are also attractive to many individuals. The most popular ancillary reward is the time for extended vacations and travel provided by the long summer vacation and other school holidays. Second to vacation time is the security of income and position. In most states teacher tenure laws provide a security not often found in other jobs. Of course, school closings and financial crises can threaten this security for many younger teachers.

John Goodlad, in A Place Called School, provides a somewhat different picture than Lortie’s. In Goodlad’s sample 57percent of the major reasons for teaching centered around the desire to teach, while only 15 percent of the reasons were related to liking children. Because of the differences between questions asked by Goodlad and Lortie in their surveys, it is difficult to compare their results. The desire to teach can be considered a desire to interact with students. But, on the other hand, the desire to teach does reflect a greater concern with subject matter as opposed to simply interacting with students. Goodlad also found a higher level of satisfaction among teachers than one would have suspected from the current criticism of the profession. In his sample, 74 percent felt their “career expectations had been fulfilled” and 69 percent said they would again “select education as a career”.

Goodlad found that “personal frustration and dissatisfaction in the teaching situation” was the major reason teachers left teaching. Conflicts with fellow teachers, administrators, and students ranked low as reasons for leaving the profession. Even low pay was not given as a major reason except insofar as it was related to a general sense of dissatisfaction. Goodlad argued that even though interest in money was not a major reason given by teachers for entering the career of teaching, it was given as the second reason for leaving it. Goodlad writes:

We might speculate that, anticipating rewards intrinsic to the work, teachers begin with a willingness to forego high salaries. However, when confronted with the frustration of these expectations, the fact that they sometimes are paid less than the bus drivers who bring their students to school may become a considerable source of dissatisfaction as well.

Another source of frustration for teachers is their relations to parents. In 1990 and 1991, Louis Harris and Associates conducted a survey of teachers’ attitudes. Seventy percent of the teachers surveyed, reported positive experiences with their students and almost 60 percent reported positive relations with other teachers. On the other hand, only 50 percent reported that their working relationship with school principals was productive. The lowest percentage of teachers expressing satisfaction was with relations with parents. Only 25 percent reported finding their relations with parents to be cooperative and supporting.

With regard to the factors contributing to a person leaving teaching, the Harris survey found that the most often cited reason was lack of parental support. The next most often cited reason was low salary. In addition, the survey found that 20 percent of new teachers felt that they were very likely to leave the profession within their first five years of teaching.

Rewards	Dissatisfactions
1. Interaction with students	1. Disinterested and violent students
2. Teaching	2. Administrative interference with teaching
3. Interaction with colleagues	3. Isolation from colleagues
4. Autonomy	4.Bureacratic interference with autonomy
5. Long summer vacations	5. Low salaries
	6. Uninvolved parents
	7. large class sizes
	8. Too heavy a course load in middle and secondary schools
	9. Low status of profession

Teacher burnout

The list of dissatisfactions in the table provides a good guide to the causes of teacher burnout . The symptoms of teacher burnout are periods of depression and an extreme dissatisfaction with teaching, to the point of finding it difficult to get up in the morning and go to work. It can be the cause of excessive fatigue resulting from depression and stress. Teacher burnout does not always result from the same circumstances. For instance, a salesperson for a book publishing firm recently came to my office and, after discussing the texts her company had for sale, she told me, “I quit teaching last year to take this job. I am a product of teacher burnout. I just couldn’t face those students again.” She had taught in a wealthy suburban district with comparatively good working conditions and few disciplinary problems. Another burnout case was a teachers’ union leader in an inner-city school who declared, half in jest, “I warn all teachers to take an extra pair of underwear to school because of the fear caused by student violence”.

One way of understanding teacher burnout is to consider it in terms of Lortie’s survey of rewards. If the primary rewards of teaching are psychic, what happens when those psychic rewards are withdrawn? Except for the flexibility of schedules and long vacations, there is little left in a low-salaried, careerless profession. In terms of Lortie’s survey, if a student resists learning and does not care about school, then the major satisfaction in teaching no longer exists. When this lack of reward is combined with threats of student violence and problems of student discipline, it seems reasonable for teachers to burn out and either become bitter or quit teaching.

Burnout is not a phenomenon peculiar to teaching. People in other occupations also become frustrated and bored and seek career changes. What is distinctive about teacher burnout is that it may be intrinsic to the educational system. Students are not rewarded by the system for demonstrating a joy of learning. The educational structure is built on accumulating course credits and years of instruction in order to get a degree or pass on to another level of instruction. Classes filled with students who are there because the law requires their presence or because they want a degree do not constitute ideal educational circumstances. Teachers are often trying to figure out how to make students learn, while students are trying to figure how to get by with the minimum effort. This situation cannot maximize teachers’ psychic rewards.

In recent years the satisfaction teachers have gained from autonomous decision-making and creativity has been threatened by expanding bureaucratic structures and attempts to control teacher behavior in the classroom. These changes may have led to greater unionization by teachers as they have attempted to restore their autonomy and ability to influence educational policy. When there are not significant increases in salaries and few external rewards, the intrusion of bureaucratic structures in the classroom can seriously contribute to teacher burnout and to an increased number of teachers changing careers.

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