The following comment has popped up a lot across my media feeds in the last week: In response to being at home with their children, I'm hearing parents say "Teaching is really hard, and teachers deserve to be the highest paid members of society." While public polling tends to support raising teacher pay, the current situation drives home the value of teachers (both from the standpoint of providing child care and facilitating positive learning opportunities) in a visceral way that I'm not sure we could manufacture even if we tried. In other words, I'm not sure whether the public will ever appreciate the value of teachers/schools like they do right now. 

So, this has gotten me thinking about how current events might create an opening for more serious discussions (and potential legislative action) around teacher pay and professionalism. Regardless of election outcomes in November, we've got a new Congress coming in 2021 and likely continued economic stimulus efforts from Washington, two factors that could provide legislative openings for federal teacher pay supplements. I'm assuming federal legislation, as the pending recession will hit states pretty hard, making it difficult for them to simply maintain current levels of funding for education.

 The question is, how do we build support for an effort like this, leveraging public sentiment to create a coalition for support for the issue? Who are our partners? What does the policy solution look like? What is the messaging strategy?  

Would be curious to get folks' thoughts on this. 

The caveat here is my assumption that what I'm hearing across my feeds is representative of what most people think. Maybe that's not the case...Also curious what folks think about that.