HIGH POINT, N.C. — As kids are prepping for the summer, many teachers across the state may be packing up their classrooms for the last time.
What You Need To Know
- North Carolina is seeing a decline in students pursuing teacher licenses
- The state ranks 38th in the nation for teacher pay and 42nd for first-year teacher salaries
- First-year teachers are leaving the profession around 3% more than other teachers in the state
- Lydia Newnum, a first-year teacher, says the career was more challenging than she thought it would be
Lydia Newnum says teachers helped craft her life, as she looked up to them as role models from an early age.
“I personally wanted to get into teaching, because I had great teachers in my life, and they invested in me. They helped me grow up and learn how to do life while being kind and courteous and caring of others,” Newnum said.
She finally got to try her hand at teaching in August as a first-year teacher at Southwest Elementary School in High Point, teaching third grade.
With just shy of 200 instructional days under her belt, she says it was much more challenging than she thought it would be.
“I think you deal with a lot more things than you expect to like. Teachers are not just teachers. They're lawyers. They're nurses. They're doctors. They're parents. Sometimes where you're trying to raise a kid in a way where they respect others and they treat others with respect too. And that can be hard because I'm not a parent, but sometimes ... I just think the job is very important. But you wear a lot of hats for sure. And I didn't expect to wear those hats as early on. And it's been a lot of growth for sure, but it's been very hard, very hard,” Newnum said.
She says teaching is the most rewarding job. However, students going for teaching degrees are declining in the state.
In 2023, North Carolina saw over a 10% decline of students interested in a career in education with less than 16,000 students pursuing a teaching license, according to a report from the North Carolina State Board of Education Department of Public Instruction.
“I would tell myself [a year ago] that it's going to be one of the hardest things that you probably will ever do. You're going to want to talk about it and get people around you that you know, that you love and that you trust and that you can tell things to. And I'm very grateful for this school specifically and this team, because I have felt very comfortable talking about what I'm struggling with. I would tell myself that it is going to be extremely hard, but persevering through it was an accomplishment for finishing off strong and not just content with the growth that they made is important. So I would tell myself that it's possible even though it doesn't feel like it, it's possible,” Newnum said.
The state has about a 15% attrition rate of first-year teachers who are defined as “first-year” for their first few years of teaching. Teachers who have been in the profession longer have a lower attrition rate at 12% across North Carolina.
“It's important to know that it's not necessarily what you expect. So keep those people around you that can help you and guide you and lead you when those expectations don't happen. And know that hard things are temporary, and that it gets easier and you'll make it through when it is hard because it's not always easy and it's not always the great day where they come in and they're happy and they're joyful and ready to learn because they're also going through things too. They're also going through hard things and as a young kid, you're learning how to process those hard things and how to get it out in a way that's effective and also healthy. You're that person for them, so you're taking it all on without even realizing it,” Newnum said.
She says she has had amazing memories with her students in her first year, from multi-cultural parades to small milestones in class.
However, one thing that is pushing teachers away from cultivating these children is pay.
“If I stayed in this profession for the rest of my life, it would be fantastic. But it's literally not. I'm not going to make it. I'm not getting paid enough. And I know some people who had to leave the profession not because they didn't love it, they loved it. They couldn't live. They weren't paying bills. They didn't have gas. They didn't have enough money for food. It's funny you hear people joke like gas or food today, and it's a joke, but it's serious,” Newnum said.
North Carolina is ranked 38th in teacher pay rankings in a study by the National Education Association released in May with the average teacher salary just below $57,000, almost $13,000 below the national average.
Starting teacher salary within the Tar Heel State ranks 42nd in the country at almost $15,000 below the minimum living wage.
“I think that's a big problem. And I think that is what keeps a lot of people out of this profession and pushes people out of it as well,” Newnum said.
The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction says last fall, 11,023 educators were hired after 10,373 left from the previous school year.
As Newnum gets ready to budget her summer and prepare her classroom for next year, she says the struggles are worth it.
“It is a very rewarding profession. It's you just have to think about how much that reward is going to keep you in the job, if that makes any sense. And it is the most rewarding job in the world and it is worth it at times. And other times you kind of go back and forth, but at the end of the day it is, you just have to battle different things,” Newnum said.