Take the twelve-month pay
Teachers are paid over ten months, not twelve. Spread it out from day one.
With Tammy Striler · 1:02 · Filmed fall 2020
What to take away
- You get paid ten months out of the year, not twelve. People don't realise that.
- Ask your district for the twelve-month option from the start.
- Otherwise two months arrive with no paycheck at all.
- That's when teachers end up waitressing over the summer. Learn to live inside the budget instead.
Why it works
The most concrete tip in the set, and the one nobody mentions in a credential program. It's a single administrative choice made in your first week that quietly decides whether your summers are restful or scrambling.
Tammy Striler
Founder · classroom teacher
Thirty years in the classroom, most of them with the door open and a student teacher in the back. Tammy started these tips because the best things she learned came from other teachers over lunch, and nobody was writing them down.
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