0
0
NS business and computer sciences teacher Justin Morley wakes up to the summer sun shining down on him. The school year just ended and it’s time for him to break out the lawn mowers and get to work.
This year is Morley’s second year teaching at NS and his fourteenth year mowing lawns. Both of which are jobs that he must have in order to have a decent living.
“It allows me to truly be a teacher,” Morley said. “I wouldn’t be able to afford living off of my teaching salary alone.”
As a first year teacher at NS, a teacher earns just $35,766 a year. Any teacher who would be the sole provider for their household would be in the lower class of the United States economy.
Realistically someone with a bachelor’s degree could find a job that pay significantly more in a different place. But many teachers have found additional employment to supplement their income.
“I own a lawn mowing business, [and I] also broad cattle,” Morley said. “The lawn mowing is seasonal, but it’s really busy with school still going on. We just mow and fertilize and aerate people’s lawns.”
Morley has been mowing lawns since the sixth grade and has helped it grow into an official business with a couple of employees who help with the jobs.
“The cows don’t really make as much money; we just started a couple years ago,” Morley said. “Down the road it’ll provide, in my opinion, a retirement plan, to a degree.”
Morley is grateful for the opportunity to have a second source of income as he feels that something like that may be crucial to provide. Morley is not alone, many teachers work to provide a second source of income.
Life sciences teacher Brad Bentley works as a journalist/writer for the local newspaper, The Pyramid.
“It kind of ties in with what I do here at the high school,” Bentley said. “I write a lot of the sports articles for the high school and also a lot of whatever else is going on here at the high school.”
With such an involvement in the sports at the high school, Bentley also found a job as the announcer of football, basketball and volleyball games.
“I just kind of fell into it,” Bentley said. “My second or third year teaching here, the announcer that was here got sick and the athletic director asked if I would be able to fill in, and I’ve been doing it since then.”
Alongside these two jobs, Bentley also spent some of his first few years of teaching as a forest service technician in order to help pay bills.
“The summer forest service job that I had was a huge boost,” Bentley said. “It was nice to have a few extra thousand dollars in the summer. It relieved a lot of financial stress.”
As a teacher moves through their years of teaching, their salary is slowly increased and any additional extra curricular activities also have the potential to pay.
“After about the first ten years of teaching, I was finally starting to make enough money to feel good about things,” Bentley said.
Bentley and Morley aren’t the only teachers who work a second job, math teacher Matt Syme works for the forest service during the summers to help provide and take his mind off of school.
“You’d think that would be really nice to have 10 weeks off–after the first week it was awful,” said math teacher Matt Syme. “People suffer if they don’t have something to do.”
Some of Syme’s responsibilities include putting up fences, developing springs, cutting down trees that are in the way, and anything else that is needed of him.
“I’m kind of a handyman for the forest service,” Syme said. “I’m not like the guy who goes out and hugs trees. We show up and if there’s an urgent need, we do it.”
Alongside the pay that is provided, Syme feels that the forest service job can help him to get his mind off of the school year.
“Financially it’s nice, but I picked [the job] up for something to do,” Syme said. “And it’s more of a therapy than anything else… it’s a nice get away.”
With so teacher salaries so low, it’s becoming more of a common occurrence for teachers to have that secondary source of income. Some of the newest teachers at NS, Justin Morley and Rhett Bird, have a business to help provide for themselves.
“You definitely have to have something to provide for your family,” Morley said. “It’s a standard that I wish wasn’t there, because it would make educators have the opportunity to provide a better job because they can focus on [teaching].”
