One in five American teachers now works a second job on top of full-time teaching. Photographer Peter Rad captures what happens when they leave the classroom
- Interviews by Erum Salam
- Learn more about the Guardian’s teacher takeover
How I survive: American teachers and their second jobs – a photo essay
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What we want: teachers on what they need to solve the crisis in our classrooms
A manifesto for change: as guest editors of Guardian US, here’s what America’s teachers need to help the next generation thrive
Falling teacher pay. Decrepit school buildings. Textbooks older than we are.
It’s no wonder this country is grappling with record teacher shortages – and our colleagues in five states have staged walkouts. But the real victims of this chronic underfunding of education are America’s children.
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How weak schools serve Trump's agenda | Arne Duncan
Of course the president says he loves the ‘poorly educated’: authoritarian regimes benefit when citizens lack education
In late July, at a speech for veterans in Kansas City, Missouri, President Trump jabbed a finger at the back of the room, where members of the media were gathered, and cautioned his audience: “Don’t believe the crap you see from these people. They’re fake news.” He was upset, as he often is, because he felt he was being treated unfairly by the media. It was pretty standard red meat, the stuff we’re growing more and more used to from our commander-in-chief. The crowd loved it.
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Teacher pay drops 5% in last decade – despite better qualified staff
New report shows teacher pay is declining, even as more educators have master’s degrees and doctorates
American teachers are getting paid less – even though they are better qualified than ever, new research has found.
Teacher salaries are down by nearly 5% compared with before the Great Recession – and it’s not because teachers are younger or less educated, according to the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution.
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Minister rebukes Toby Young: universities are not 'leftwing madrassas'
Sam Gyimah calls on vice-chancellors to continue to embrace ideological diversity
British universities are “not leftwing madrassas”, the higher education minister Sam Gyimah said in riposte to Toby Young, during a speech to vice-chancellors that was markedly gentler than the government’s recent rhetoric.
Related: How Toby Young got where he isn’t today | Stewart Lee
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Labour and Prince Charles vow to support creativity in schools
Artists and politicians at Royal Albert Hall event voice concerns over slide of arts in schools
Labour has pledged to put “creativity at the heart of the school curriculum” in a series of policy announcements that coincided with a gathering of artists, actors, teachers and arts leaders convened by Prince Charles to address the subject.
About 200 people, including Benedict Cumberbatch, Vivienne Westwood, Lenny Henry, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Zoe Wanamaker and Meera Syal were at the Royal Albert Hall to support a campaign to promote the arts and creativity in schools.
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'I'm $100k in debt. I'm drowning': teachers share their stories – live
Join us as teachers tell their stories of chronic underfunding in schools – and how it affects their job and their students’ futures
- Share your experiences here and talk to us in the comments
Arne Duncan, former education secretary under Barack Obama, asks: What do Trump’s authoritarian dreams have to do with education policy? Everything, he says. Authoritarian regimes benefits from an educated citizenry.
Related: How weak schools serve Trump's agenda | Arne Duncan
Shannon Ergun in Tacoma, who we featured earlier in the blog, has written back to us to say her district has voted to go on strike:
Our admin refuses to provide competitive professional compensation commensurate with local area districts even in the face of significant funding increases from the state. I’m on the bargaining team and we go back to the table today. If the district will shift, we’ll start school tomorrow. If not, we’ll be on the picket lines on Thursday morning.
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Call for university staff to get mandatory suicide prevention training
Guidance from Universities UK and charity Papyrus seeks to halt rise in student deaths
All university staff who deal with students should receive training in suicide intervention and prevention, according to new guidelines.
But the guidance – published by the Universities UK (UUK) group and the youth suicide prevention charity Papyrus – makes only brief references to data protection issues that could block universities from contacting the families of vulnerable students.
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DfE warns teachers against expressing 'political views'
Headteachers and unions vow to defy government advice after school funding cuts
Headteachers and teaching unions have said they will defy any attempts by the Department for Education to block legitimate criticism, after it issued advice warning teachers in England against expressing “political views”.
A revision issued on Wednesday to the DfE’s document entitled Staffing and employment advice for schools– billed as departmental advice for school leaders, governing bodies and local authorities – contained a new paragraph with a blunt statement in a staff management section.
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Chief rabbi calls on Jewish schools to tackle homophobia
Ephraim Mirvis says many LGBT+ pupils in Orthodox schools ‘endure deep distress’
The chief rabbi has issued guidance for Orthodox Jewish schools on providing support for LGBT+ students, saying there is a religious duty to protect young people and their families.
The unprecedented document, described as a milestone, is likely to get a hostile reception from some Orthodox Jews who refuse to acknowledge diversity in sexual orientation or gender identity.
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Why is the curriculum so white in business schools? | Alessia Contu
To build the next generation of diverse corporate leaders, we need to stop ignoring racial inequality
“We hardly ever get a chance to talk about race in class,” a business school student recently remarked to me. We had just finished a discussion on racial colour-blindness. She was right. In business schools, diversity tends to be “mere decoration” while the focus stays on the “bottom line”.
This is perverse since UK and US business schools have the most popular (and lucrative) university courses, often with highly diverse students from all over the world. In 2015/16, management courses in the UK had the third highest proportion of students of colour, after medicine and law.
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The working-class kid who became a writer: how a Kansas teacher helped change my life
I grew up on a farm – but was able to trade my family’s backbreaking labor for a life of writing. My teacher, Mr Cheatham, is partly to thank for this
Fourth grade should’ve been the hardest year of my early life.
My parents had divorced during the previous summer and sold the house my dad built with his own hands next to a wheat field. Economic opportunity lacking in rural Kansas, we moved to the city of Wichita. After attending the same small-town school from kindergarten through third grade, I started the academic year in the Wichita school district.
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Country pride: what I learned growing up in rural America
I was raised on a farm in Kansas, where I’d slopped the hogs and helped harvest the wheat. What did it mean to be ‘country’?
What it means to be “country” has changed in the few decades of my lifetime, I think, from an experience to a brand cultivated by conservative forces.
Once, when I was about 30, I saw a boy from a small town wearing a T-shirt that read pro-God, pro-guns, pro-life. I was shocked. In my experience, there was no evangelism about my family’s Catholic faith in the 1980s and little overt cross-pollination between our church and our politics. There was, that I can recall, no resentment toward people in cities with more formal education and money. I’m suspicious when I see these tropes trotted out proudly to represent the rural, working-class experience, often by people who have things my family never could have afforded.
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The day maggots fell from the ceiling: why I quit teaching
I’d read all the books, seen all the documentaries, but I still wasn’t ready for the horrors of America’s schools
Teaching is in my blood. My mother is a teacher, and my grandfather was a principal in Miami. In college during the summers, I worked for this phenomenal local non-profit modeled after the education organization Breakthrough Collaborative, which provides educational programming to kids in low-income communities so they don’t slide during the summers, and I learned I, too, loved teaching. When I stepped into the classroom that first summer and saw that I had a natural ability to reach kids and bring them joy, I knew I had to do it.
Related: How I survive: American teachers and their second jobs – a photo essay
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The teacher pay gap: how a promising career for women lost its shine
Average teacher income has fallen since 2000, lagging well behind other college graduates’ pay – but unions make a difference. The sorry state of teacher pay in three charts
Teachers’ salaries aren’t just stagnating, they’re declining, according to data from the National Education Association. Here are three charts that show how it’s becoming harder for US teachers to cover their costs of living.
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Teacher shortages worsening in majority of US states, study reveals
Exclusive: Guardian survey shows schools turning to underqualified graduates to put more teachers in the classroom
Teacher shortages are worsening across the US for the majority of states, according to an exclusive survey by the Guardian.
The Guardian contacted all US states’ departments and boards of education, and other official bodies. Forty-one states responded; nine others declined to provide relevant data or did not respond to requests for information.
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State control over academic freedom in Hungary threatens all universities
The Hungarian government’s clampdown on gender studies and research into migration sets a dangerous precedent
Universities in Hungary are under serious pressure. They are facing dangerous government threats to academic freedom and autonomy that are unprecedented in the European Union. Most recently, the government has announced its intention to close down all gender studies courses in the country.
The government’s reason is that the country has no need for graduates in gender studies, and that there are not enough students – but government officials have also confirmed ideological idiosyncrasies.
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Brazil National Museum: as much as 90% of collection destroyed in fire
Building was not insured, the museum’s deputy director said, but some pieces survived including the Bendegó meteorite
As much as 90% of the collection at Brazil’s National Museum was destroyed in a devastating fire on Sunday and – compounding the disaster – the building was not insured, according to the museum’s deputy director.
Some pieces survived, including the famous Bendegó meteorite and a library of 500,000 books – including works dating back to the days of the Portuguese empire – which was kept in a separate annex, Cristiana Serejo told reporters in front of the building’s blackened shell.
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An academic said 'nice dress'. Would complaining make me a snowflake? | Anonymous academic
He kissed me and touched my arm straight away. It took an anti-harassment campaign to make me realise I wasn’t overreacting
Since starting my career as an academic, I’ve heard tell of the allegedly widespread unprofessional behaviour: stories in which lines are crossed and sexual misconduct takes place in conferences and events built on an underlying power inequality. But nothing of the sort ever happened to me. So when, finally, it did, I was unprepared for how to deal with it. I was racked with self-doubt: was I overreacting? Am I just another snowflake?
My story is as follows. I had contacted a senior scholar whom I had never met in person to arrange a meeting. I first felt unease when he finished a professional email with two kisses. I brushed it off and told myself that he was just being friendly.
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The comeback kids: how a struggling public school made the grade
An Alabama school district is trying to break the cycle of poverty by enrolling students in programs that allow them to eventually graduate with college credits or degrees
Soaring 1,000 feet above rural Alabama, Trent Stewart is airborne for the second time in his life. The 17-year-old takes control of the three-seat aircraft for just a moment before his flight instructor is in charge again, steering Trent closer to the 10 hours of flight time he needs before he can feel the fear and exhilaration of a solo flight.
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