EdSurge senior reporter Emily Tate Sullivan received a high journalism prize this month for her work documenting the persistent, nationwide drawback of low trainer pay in the US.
The Schooling Writers Affiliation named Tate Sullivan the winner of a 2022 Nationwide Award for Schooling Reporting within the beat reporting class. The respect acknowledges a set of 5 tales she reported and wrote final yr in regards to the monetary issue many educators face, the methods they use to make ends meet, and potential options for enhancing compensation for lecturers.
“In practically each interplay I had with a trainer, together with interviews for unrelated tales, they might inform me earlier than hanging up how they had been fed up and considering of leaving, that circumstances of their college group had deteriorated, and that the compensation for what was requested of them had turn out to be extra insulting than they might bear,” Tate Sullivan wrote in her award submission letter. “On the identical time, college districts had been reporting hundreds of unfilled workers openings. As a nation, we couldn’t afford to lose our lecturers. However I questioned, may we afford to maintain them?”
Marisa Busch served because the editor for these articles. One in every of them, “Our Nation’s Academics Are Hustling to Survive,” was co-published with the investigative journal Mom Jones. It explores why practically 1 in 5 American public college lecturers need to work a second job exterior of the classroom to make ends meet.
They embody third grade trainer Cara Rothrock, who clocks hours at Polly’s Freeze, a roadside restaurant in Indiana. And center college band trainer Swati Linder, who additionally sells actual property in South Carolina (she has since left educating altogether). And Marcus Blankenship, a sixth grade historical past trainer in North Carolina who drives for the rideshare app Lyft.
The judges referred to as the story “actually eye-opening,” noting that it “plowed new floor on an issue training reporters have lengthy heard about and did so in a manner that was a compelling learn, with good stats backing up actually highly effective narratives from these educating in our lecture rooms — and in addition ready tables, driving Ubers, and so on.”
The Schooling Writers Affiliation is knowledgeable affiliation for journalists. Newsrooms submitted greater than 400 entries to the 2022 Nationwide Awards for Schooling Reporting. The competitors was independently judged by 118 present and former editors and reporters.
That is the second time Tate Sullivan has taken house a Nationwide Award for Schooling Reporting. She received an award for function writing for her 2020 story about an Ohio preschool that helps the youngest victims of the opioid disaster.
