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
- Obama’s ed secretary: How weak schools serve Trump’s agenda by Arne Duncan
- New data released by The Guardian from the Brookings Institution shows that even as teacher pay has declined by nearly 5% since 2009, teachers are more qualified and better educated than ever before
- How I Survive: Teachers and their second jobs. Photo essay: The oyster farmer, the Uber driver, the Barnes and Noble bookseller — the things teachers do to pay the bills
- The job Americans Won’t Take: Teaching: Amid escalating teacher shortages, school districts are recruiting teachers from the Philippines. Report from the Arizona district where teacher shortages cut deep and they are employing Filipinos to fill the gap.
- Sarah Smarsh, award-winning author, on the Kansas teacher who changed the course of her life — and why school underfunding means working-class kids will never get that opportunity again. Smarsh and the teacher will soon meet for the first time in 30 years — running Thursday
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.