The Guardian’s Teacher Takeover Project

Today the Guardian US launched a three day guest-edited series called Teacher Takeover. The series highlight the crisis in America’s classrooms and the activism of teachers. The series addresses low teacher pay, underfunded schools and the teacher’s perspective based in their protest movement.

As part of the project, The Guardian features a photo essay called How I Survive: American Teachers and their second jobs. Those jobs include moonlighting at an oyster farmer, driving for Uber drive, or selling books at Barnes & Nobles.

Considering the tech news cycle churn is about camera bodies and lenses, it’s a good time to share stories about what photographers use those cameras for and photojournalism about stories affecting millions of parents and their children.

The stories include

About the series, John Mulholland, editor, Guardian US said:

It’s unfathomable that some American teachers depend on food pantries because a teaching salary can’t support their family — and that they have to dip into their own pockets to fund basic supplies for their classes and schools. America seems not to value the people charged with educating its children.

We wanted to tell the story of shockingly low teacher pay and the chronic underfunding of US education through the eyes of the teachers living it every day — and explain how it has led to this powerful wave of teacher activism that’s sweeping the country.

My kids are in college now, but the situation wasn’t much different a few years ago. Also, the power of a photograph outweighs the specs.

Feature photo of a teacher moonlighting at an oyster farm by Peter Rad for Guardian US.

My daily shooter is Sony A1 with a vertical grip and various Sony lenses attached like the FE 20mm F1.8. Find more gear recommendations in our shop. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.