South Dakota Education Secretary Joe Graves' new book touches on teacher pay, shortage and CRT

South Dakota Department of Education Secretary Joe Graves has written a new book that is sure to be the talk of educators and non-educators alike for his stance on teacher pay, the teacher shortage and other hot education topics.

Graves’ “Renewing the Joys of Teaching: How the Principles of Stoicism Can Return Fulfillment to the Classroom,” was released Nov. 21.

In the book, Graves explores Stoicism, which he says is a way of life, with a goal of living a good life through the four virtues of courage, wisdom, restraint and justice. It differs from being stoic, which he describes as a personality trait, being emotionally undemonstrative and unexpressive.

Throughout the book, Graves argues Stoicism may be a way of getting through angst and pain to find a new love and joy in teaching. He uses multiple examples of dilemmas educators might face to illustrate how a person practicing Stoicism might approach different situations.

He details the four virtues of Stoicism: courage, or meeting obligations to others; wisdom, or understanding the difference between good, neutral and evil, and what one can and can’t control; restraint, or accepting neither less than one needs nor grasping for more; and justice, or doing right by others.

Graves was inspired to write the book because he had always had an interest in the subject of Stoicism. He studied philosophy as an undergrad and graduate student, and as he watched the COVID-19 pandemic rollout, he started seeing educators waiver in their commitment to education, he told the Argus Leader.

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“In many cases, these people were making terrible mistakes, not just for the profession, but for themselves as well,” Graves said. “The whole notion of Stoicism really lends itself to that interpretation to say, ‘Don’t leave your profession because of a temporary crisis, because it’s going to harm the profession, it’s going to harm the kids you serve and it's going to harm essentially yourself in your own life.’”

Rep. Dusty Johnson reviewed Graves’ book and wrote on the back cover that Graves’ “thoughtful, insightful and accessible work can help any of us rediscover the joy of our professional calling.”

Local author Jean L.S. Patrick also reviewed the book and said it will “prompt conversation and debate among educators and laypeople alike” on the back cover.

Here are some notable quotes and newsworthy notes from Graves’ book.

COVID-19

Graves’ book touches on the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts several times. In the preface, he writes how students from middle- and upper-class backgrounds held steady or advanced, and those from families of a lower socioeconomic status regressed, similarly to summer break.

“We were simultaneously horrified and helpless to do anything about it,” Graves states in the preface on page ix.

More: South Dakota public schools report 21% of students still chronically absent in 2022-23

The pandemic also contributed to the teacher shortage, Grave wrote, stating “many in schools simply couldn’t go on. Their reserves of happiness, contentment, or mental health were simply overdrawn.”

This led some teachers to retire or seek new professions, Graves noted, and as teacher shortages increased, so did shortages of custodians, secretaries and bus drivers. Few teachers and other school employees that stayed didn’t feel some mark or lingering side effect of having worked in schools during the pandemic.

Many teachers are abandoning a profession they once found meaningful, and many teachers and other educators are “still down in the dumps,” Graves writes in the preface.

Teacher shortage

By some estimates, as high as 25% of educators have left the profession in the wake of COVID-19 for reasons like frustration over virtual learning, anxiety of pandemic living, mental health reasons or students failing to tune in literally and figuratively, Graves wrote.

He adds many professionals left who should not have, and are therefore destined to a life of unhappiness and despair.

“As labor shortages worsened, wages skyrocketed and the compensation difference between less challenging employment and education significantly narrowed,” Graves wrote. “This provided some educators with a temptation to leave the profession.”

More: How are South Dakota’s colleges filling the teacher shortage and educating future teachers?

Some educators don’t see a problem with the teacher shortage because it boosts the value of those who remain and can boost compensation levels, Graves stated, but added educators who want a more joyful profession and want more teachers in the profession should, and do, mentor new teachers.

Struggles of the job, such as a rise in behaviors, come up in Graves’ book. In a chapter about negative visualization, he suggests teachers and paraeducators can prepare for situations where students exhibit violent behavior by anticipating it, visualizing the worst that could happen and practicing techniques to prevent the aggression.

Graves states the No. 1 reason for departures isn’t the pandemic, but student misbehavior.

“A combination of social media encouragement, increased parental support of their children regardless of the offense, and special education ‘cover’ for students with IEPs even extending to violence has made effective teaching a more difficult proposition than in the past,” Graves wrote.

Stoic educators can de-escalate situations by modulating their voice tone, softening their actions and not ramping up the situation, Graves wrote.

Job satisfaction

Unhappiness can come from teaching if one rails against what they can’t control, from unions or associations that contribute to their members’ unhappiness, from not sticking it out, from comparing pay or more, Graves wrote in his book.

Certain difficult realities remain in education post-pandemic, like chronic student absences, substitute teacher shortages, “a generation of students who learned during virtual schooling that expectations of them have been lowered,” more disciplinary issues, and demanding parents, Graves wrote, adding it’s no wonder many are leaving the profession.

More: 'I feel like I'm a world-changer': Teachers often inspire their students to enter education

Despite this, educators need to “stick it out,” Graves wrote, or “hold on to the belief that things will get better,” or plan for even worse.

Being an educator is not about “the perks -- reasonable salary, state pension, summers (off),” -- but instead about its meaning, Graves wrote.

Graves told the Argus Leader that by “perks,” he meant a physical or material advantage to the career of teaching.

Teacher pay

Stoics say to be happy with less, and the same can be applied to pay, as Graves writes in his book, but many American educators have a “perception” they’re underpaid or dismally paid, Graves wrote.

“School administrators and teachers continue to lament their compensation level, never even stopping to acknowledge that their paychecks are a lot fatter than they used to be,” Graves wrote.

South Dakota ranks 49th in the nation for average teacher salary, according to rankings from the National Education Association, and the average South Dakota teacher’s salary is less than it was in 2017 when factoring in inflation, according to a recent report from South Dakota Searchlight.

More: South Dakota teachers make less than they did in 2017, when factoring in inflation

When asked if it’s a perception or reality that teachers are underpaid, Graves told the Argus Leader that it’s a perception, but also an understanding that educators have going into the profession about what it pays.

“Education pays what it pays,” Graves told the Argus Leader. “It’s not going to be a field where you’re going to become obscenely wealthy. It does provide a very comfortable lifestyle in America. It provides a good quality of life in America.”

He said it’s impossible to determine if teachers are underpaid because of the job they do, because their job is so important. He also said it’s likely every profession hasn’t kept up with inflation.

“Can you ever say that a teacher is paid enough?” he questioned.

More: South Dakota is 'inflation plus $5K' away from 'great' teacher compensation, school official says

Merit pay, he argues, will create “endless, harmful competition among people who should be working together for a common good.”

If you pay someone too little, they will leave, but if you pay them enough, they will no longer be dissatisfied or unhappy, Graves wrote.

“He who believes that teachers are underpaid will see in the private sector nothing but a sea of entrepreneurs raking in a bonanza and building a massive portfolio,” Graves wrote. “Even though education pays better today than pretty much any time in modern history, the image of the teacher who qualifies for food stamps remains uncorrected.”

Standards

In the book, Graves touches on content standards and curriculum. He gives an example of a third-grade teacher who’s “beating herself up over the fact that she’s been given the impossible task of teaching everything that the standards or the district curriculum guides say she must teach.”

Graves wrote in his book that this third-grade teacher should cut the nonessentials or the least essential, then “teach the rest thoroughly and with regard to actual student mastery rather than just coverage, and then smile.”

One of the arguments made by teachers during the recent controversial social studies standards process was that there was too much to teach in the standards in a reasonable amount of time in the school year.

More: South Dakota social studies standards pass, despite opposition from educators, tribes

Asked whether the third-grade teacher in this scenario should “cut nonessentials” from the standards, Graves told the Argus Leader that all districts are required to teach to all standards and all subject matters and that teachers need to do their best to try to fit everything in and give everything as much time as it needs.

He added that a solution could be to combine subjects or integrate English language arts with science, or math with social studies, for example.

“That’s one of the things a really good, solid, and seasoned teacher does is they figure out where these standards can be approached so everything isn’t standalone,” Graves said. “Standalone, especially in elementary school, is not always a good thing.”

Critical race theory

Graves touches on critical race theory once in his book. He defines it as “teaching history and social issues as if the only determining factor in any of them is race,” and argues that “while race is historically important, it’s not the whole megillah.”

Critical race theory (CRT) is an academic theory that states race is a social construct, that racism isn’t just the product of individual bias or prejudice, and racism is embedded in the nation’s legal systems and policies.

More: Gov. Kristi Noem signs executive order limiting critical race theory in K-12 schools

When teachers teach the Civil War, for example, they should look between CRT and the revisionist history of the Civil War that it was fought for reasons besides race. Graves argues between the two viewpoints is the “correct position” that race impacts historical events but isn’t the only relevant factor.

“Telling school-aged children they are somehow responsible for the oppressions of other races in the past is as foolish and inaccurate as is whitewashing history of the obvious racial inputs to so many tragedies of the past,” Graves said.

It’s noteworthy that Graves touched on critical race theory in this book after Gov. Kristi Noem signed an executive order in April 2022 limiting its influence or the “divisive concepts” she believed the academic theory promotes in K-12 schools.

At the time, top education officials in K-12 schools and in the state’s colleges said CRT largely doesn't show up in South Dakota's content standards or curriculum.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: SD Department of Education Secretary Joe Graves releases new book