TUCSON, Az. – Deanna McDonald has been a teacher for more than 30 years. It’s a profession she loved and recommended to her students. But not anymore.
When the University of Arizona asked McDonald to recommend students to a teaching workshop, she didn’t respond.
“And I have referred people to them many, many years. But not this year.”
McDonald is one of a growing number of teachers who say the cost of an education to become a teacher isn’t worth the low salaries many teachers receive.
McDonald said she used to stand up for her job.
“I had a huge argument with a couple of colleagues and they were saying that they refuse to recommend education to their students,” she said. “And I was adamant that this is the best job in the world.”
But this year she had a change of heart.
“How do you say to a young person in high school, ‘I want you to take on college, and I want you to perhaps go into debt, because college is expensive. And then I want you to get out, and I want your yearly salary to be so bad, so low that you’re not gonna be able to afford to live,” McDonald told KGUN.
“I can’t say to my students anymore that this is a wonderful job when the pay is so bloody terrible.”
As for the other teachers who didn’t respond to the workshop?
“Perhaps they’ve come to where I am a lot sooner.”
Response was so low, the university had to cancel the program after teachers refused to recommend students become teachers.
In a statement, the university said:
Several teachers said that in the current education climate they could not in good conscience recommend that a person become a math teacher.
