As a second year teacher with a Masters degree, I would be making about 46k/year. Even my first year seemed like a huge number because I’d never made anything even in the ballpark of that. Since I was struggling hard financially over the summer, I applied for an assistant manager job at a high-end local fast food restaurant.
During the interview, they mentioned that if I were to be full time assistant manager it would be a 48k/year salary but I couldn’t do that and teach at the same time. I playfully mentioned how that is more than I make as a teacher anyways, and the interviewer was quite visibly shocked by that. He took a moment to think and then asked if I was interested in being General Manager instead of going back to teaching.
The GM salary offer was 56,000. That’s $10,000 per year higher than a Masters level high school math teacher. For a fast food general manager.
That was the moment, and only then, that I realized the system is rigged against teachers and there doesn’t seem to be any solution foreseeable in the near future. Absurd.