In the professional world, educators are some of the most undervalued, overworked, and underpaid employees, and they arguably do one of the most important jobs: educating the next generation.

We look at teachers, we look at counselors, we look at teaching aides — there’s a reason we’ve seen teacher strikes and sit-ins so many times in the last decade.

The work we do in our outreach/access + retention projects is the work of educators, and our students have every right to be vocalizing their opinion on the concern about a lack of payment and transparency of the process for the work they do for our communities.

However, the rhetoric of “it’s okay not to be paid (both on time or not enough) because the work we do is for the community and it’s fulfilling” is worrisome, because it’s ingraining in our students that it’s okay to undervalue + under-appreciate the work of the educator.

It’s teaching them that, should they decide to pursue a career as a teacher, as a counselor, or enter the education field in any capacity, that they should expect and tolerate late + inadequate compensation and an undervaluing of their work.

Work that they do for our community, for our families, for our students. When in reality, that is the type of work that should be valued at a top tier, because we're fighting against a system that was not created with us or for us.

We’re fighting against layers of institutional racism, classism, elitism, & so many other forms of oppression.

In this work, as students from the communities that we are serving, we are being asked to break generational curses and navigate systems that have kept us down and kept us out for decades, if not centuries.

The belief that we're lucky to even be compensated for this work must be unlearned, because the reality is we DESERVE to be paid for this work.

When we are not, and we’re forced to take on multiple jobs to be able to survive and maintain our livelihoods, we cannot put our whole hearts into the work that we do for our community.

We are still in a global pandemic and it’s understandable that there will be delays, bumps, and miscommunication.

But that doesn’t change the fact that our students do EXTREMELY valuable work that should be compensated adequately, and if they are not paid in a timely manner, there should be full transparency of where their money is and when it should get here.