Teachers should be paid six figures, former educator says, or "we're going to lose so many people along the way"
CBSN
It's difficult to "understand why teaching is hard," former middle school teacher Colette Coleman said, and so she expected some pushback when her op-ed "The Case For Paying All Teachers Six Figures" was published in The New York Times last week.
"They may feel like, say you're an elementary school teacher, 'Oh, you're hanging out with kids all day,' and of course that's not what it is," Coleman said Thursday on CBSN. "I think maybe people need more insight into understanding what the profession actually entails." "When I was teaching it wasn't just that I was a teacher, I also felt often like, I'm a social worker, I'm a nurse — there are so many hats that you have to wear that that also adds to the taxing nature of the job," Coleman said.Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.