Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Rule 35

00:00:00.000 Is anyone else bothered by the proliferation of Instagram famous teachers?

00:00:11.100 I don't know. I seriously wonder about how much teaching goes on in some of these teacher

00:00:16.440 influencer classrooms. As a parent, I would be very upset to know that a teacher is using

00:00:22.420 learning time to create content for their own personal benefit.

00:00:26.440 I know what you mean.

00:00:27.700 I can't look at my Explore page without being attacked with these Insta teachers.

00:00:33.060 Some have good stuff and cute stuff, but mostly it's all promotions and perfect classrooms.

00:00:39.700 I followed a lot of Insta teachers only to be completely done with them because of how crazy it is.

00:00:44.980 In the beginning, I loved them for their ideas and inspiration,

00:00:48.440 but it stopped being inspirational and just started being nauseating.

00:00:51.900 As a first-year teacher who is struggling so hard, I had to unfollow those accounts because they made me feel like I'm not doing enough.

00:01:05.840 What you just heard are some complaints about teachers who post their lives on Instagram.

00:01:11.300 These complaints come from parents and also from other teachers.

00:01:15.860 I found them in a Reddit thread that had thousands of comments.

00:01:20.820 Yeah, so teachers are on Instagram.

00:01:24.160 This shouldn't come as a massive surprise since teachers, get this, 0.88

00:01:28.780 they're human beings who live in the freaking world. 0.81

00:01:31.840 Remember Rule 35 for influencers? 0.51

00:01:34.240 If something exists in the world, then there's an influencer for it.

00:01:38.580 Teachers fit the bill.

00:01:40.000 But teachers as an influencing category really does surprise a lot of people.

00:01:44.720 Glynis actually couldn't believe it when I told her.

00:01:47.420 Today we're going to talk about teacher Instagram.

00:01:49.960 is that a real thing oh yeah what is teacher instagram it feels problematic to me already

00:01:56.140 and that's why we're bringing it up it feels like a special where you discover that the person

00:02:02.880 teaching your child has a separate double life doing something that makes you anxious about

00:02:10.440 what they might be bringing into the classroom right so in the old days it used to be like oh

00:02:14.220 my gosh like what if my kid's teacher were a drug dealer that would be the real special

00:02:20.720 to better understand the shock and fear of seeing teachers on instagram

00:02:27.960 i called the first listener who dm'd me about it her name's jessie

00:02:31.980 hey jessie how you doing i'm good how are you

00:02:37.320 you slid into my dms like six or seven months ago can you just tell the audience why you messaged me

00:02:49.260 sure so my preschooler is getting some special services at school and when we found out who the

00:02:59.540 services would be provided by i googled them because we're new to the school district i was

00:03:04.900 kind of curious to know her credential. Like I figured I'd find some professional page from

00:03:10.800 the county website and instead discovered pretty quickly because of her distinctive last name that 1.00

00:03:16.920 she is an influencer. Yeah. So what was that discovery like for you to be like, oh, the woman 0.99

00:03:29.880 who will be teaching my kid, helping my kid in school, is putting parts of their lives out there 0.89

00:03:37.300 on the internet. The part that also felt hard is I'm uncool. You know, like during the pandemic,

00:03:43.520 I moved from the city into the suburbs. I do not wear crop tops. I wear lots of soft pants now.

00:03:52.220 And there's a new restaurant that opened in our neighborhood that's very cool.

00:03:56.580 and she made it to the soft open.

00:03:59.920 Oh, was she wearing a crop top? 0.60

00:04:02.540 She sure was, sure was.

00:04:05.200 With a cool, like, I don't know what you call it,

00:04:07.560 like duster over it.

00:04:09.000 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah, yeah.

00:04:10.800 I could never pull off a crop top with a duster these days.

00:04:14.780 I just can't.

00:04:15.540 I'm also, I'm glad you brought that up

00:04:17.300 because I'm also not cool.

00:04:19.880 I'm not cool anymore.

00:04:21.140 And I will say that looking at Instagram

00:04:23.460 is just a daily reminder of how not cool.

00:04:25.560 So the reason I wanted to talk to you was just kind of to get out there, like all the feelings that come up when we discover someone's an influencer that we didn't expect to have this life on the Internet.

00:04:40.620 And whether or not those feelings are fair, I don't know if they are.

00:04:44.680 And we're going to unpack them.

00:04:46.560 But I do know that maybe you don't want to see the person who's teaching your kids out partying hard during a pandemic.

00:04:56.180 And then also just the ability to compare ourselves.

00:05:01.620 Exactly right.

00:05:02.260 It felt crazy making and it felt like it was then easy to judge what she was doing.

00:05:08.200 Not fair, but it happened.

00:05:10.200 And I had a mix of concern that she wasn't professional, which is the part that was, I think, unfair, but definitely present and also kind of curious, like, what's her motivation and why is she, like, into selling crop tops and Botox on Instagram by night if by day she's helping kids?

00:05:32.800 okay i think i might know why and i don't think that it is as scandalous

00:05:44.480 as jesse thinks but we have some more reporting to do i'm joe piazza and you're under the influence

00:06:02.800 episode three rule 35 so as i said i've got a theory as to why so many teachers are becoming

00:06:22.740 all different kinds of influencers and it's pretty simple frankly i'm just gonna throw out

00:06:29.080 a little bit of wisdom right here. We don't pay teachers enough in this country. We do not pay

00:06:34.840 them well for the very important job they do teaching our children. If you don't pay someone

00:06:39.320 well, they need a side hustle. Of course, I told Glynnis this because I tell Glynnis everything.

00:06:46.540 Hi. I probably tell Glynnis way too much, but she was also completely fascinated by this.

00:06:52.460 So we're bringing her further along on this journey today, you, me, Glynnis, to talk through

00:06:57.880 my thoughts. Since I talked to Jesse, since I started digging into this, I found out that there

00:07:03.580 are so many teachers side hustling on Instagram, doing all different kinds of things. Some of them

00:07:10.520 are influencers for other teachers. They're doing lesson plans and look at my beautiful classroom.

00:07:17.600 But others are like, you know, the teacher of Jesse's kid who are, you know, selling Botox and

00:07:24.580 crop tops and and there's other ones that are travel influencers fertility influencers but I

00:07:29.280 understand why they do it they do it because we're not paying teachers nearly enough to one support 0.95

00:07:35.300 themselves and two pay for all of the crap they need for the kids in their classroom I can't stop 0.93

00:07:42.280 thinking about that video that went viral of the teachers in South Dakota there was it showed up 0.99

00:07:50.680 And it was at some sort of fair.

00:07:52.320 It was a hockey game.

00:07:53.260 It was a halftime, like, game.

00:07:55.340 And this game, right, was that they were going to dump a ton of cash money onto the ice.

00:08:02.900 And then the teachers would scramble for it.

00:08:05.360 And it was money to improve their classrooms.

00:08:08.420 And there's just this video of these three or four teachers on their hands and knees scrambling for these dollar bills, like, in a rush.

00:08:15.900 it felt to me like if aliens landed on earth you could show them this video and it would explain

00:08:25.540 almost everything you need to know about the ways in which america treats the industries which we

00:08:34.240 pretend to value so much and yet the amount of shame attached to this and disrespect it was so

00:08:41.920 grotesque. It's disgusting how we treat teachers in this country. I did some reporting on this

00:08:47.660 just to look up some statistics. And teachers make about 20% less than other professionals

00:08:53.500 with similar education and similar experience. That is a fact. In many parts of this country,

00:08:59.620 teachers actually live below the family living wage. And so, of course, teachers are going to

00:09:05.480 try to make some extra cash by shoving it down their shirts at the halftime of a mid-level hockey

00:09:13.440 game. And in so many ways, I mean, we're in the, this happened in the middle of a pandemic where

00:09:18.000 teachers are bearing the brunt along with mothers. It's the two roles that we fill to care, take

00:09:23.760 children, which is mothers are being punished by having their children at home, which I know you

00:09:27.120 know, Joe, and teachers are being punished and asked to risk their health by having kids in

00:09:32.300 school and then you just watch this frenzy over this and you just think like how much lower can

00:09:37.340 we force people to go in an effort to not just support themselves but to support children yeah

00:09:43.480 the video is a dystopian nightmare and our educational system has simply failed teachers

00:09:49.220 and like most things in this world instagram is trying to fill in those gaps these teachers that

00:09:56.660 are hustling on instagram are doing it to make up for the fact that we don't pay teachers enough

00:10:01.660 That's why they're doing this.

00:10:03.420 Absolutely.

00:10:07.040 Jessie was real aware that she was being judgy.

00:10:09.720 And I get it.

00:10:10.560 I would be a little bit judgy too. 1.00

00:10:12.440 I'm a total judgy asshole. 0.99

00:10:14.260 But it goes to show that people get freaked out 1.00

00:10:17.340 when someone they don't expect to see on Instagram is on the Instagram.

00:10:21.340 It's a lot like when I was growing up a thousand years ago

00:10:24.060 and I saw my teacher in the supermarket or worse at like the town pool

00:10:29.460 and they were wearing a bathing suit.

00:10:31.660 And it's all like, oh, my God, you're not supposed to be a human being who has thighs.

00:10:39.520 But I also think it's because there aren't any guidelines about any of this anywhere yet.

00:10:45.640 We don't know what to do or what to think.

00:10:48.060 And Glynis brought up a really, really good point.

00:10:51.440 Why do parents need to look at a teacher's Instagram account anyway?

00:10:54.840 i think there is a bit of like a church and stateness like does the teacher want the kids

00:11:05.460 parents following them on instagram this feels like there's no rules that's the thing so what

00:11:11.360 i want to explore is if your day job is a specific thing taking care of children or as a hospital

00:11:19.960 worker like you know a person that is what if your gynecologist was a influencer and some other

00:11:25.440 give me something to talk about during my pap smear that's true so like what are the boundaries 0.55

00:11:31.080 like what day jobs is it okay to be an influencer and what day jobs is it not when I started doing

00:11:37.480 the research into teachers on social media my first question was what are the rules here

00:11:44.700 What are the school rules?

00:11:46.220 Yeah, the school rules, but then also the legal rules.

00:11:49.980 Like, what are the actual legal boundaries of what teachers are allowed to post?

00:11:55.280 And also, what are their protections?

00:11:57.440 Exactly.

00:11:57.960 Like, will the school protect them?

00:11:59.640 Or are there legal protections that say, no, a school can't fire a teacher for something that they post on Instagram, even if parents feel uncomfortable about it?

00:12:11.660 What are the parameters of how a teacher is allowed to act on Instagram?

00:12:15.240 Exactly.

00:12:16.320 So what is the answer to this question?

00:12:18.680 Did you find out?

00:12:20.880 I love it when Glynis asks if I found something out.

00:12:24.020 Because of course I found it out.

00:12:25.820 I can't not find it out.

00:12:27.200 It is like the best and worst parts of me that I have to keep chasing down answers to these questions.

00:12:34.180 What I found out is that it is a real gray area.

00:12:37.420 Like most things about women on the internet, it's confusing.

00:12:42.060 And I got another inkling of this when I talked to an influencer named Karen Jeffries. 0.90

00:12:47.380 Karen is a fertility influencer. 0.99

00:12:49.640 That is also Rule 35. 1.00

00:12:51.240 It exists in the world.

00:12:52.540 It exists on Instagram. 0.98

00:12:54.000 There's a whole world of fertility influencers.

00:12:57.840 When Karen was having trouble having a baby, she started an Instagram about it.

00:13:02.520 Her account, which is at hilariously infertile, I'm really into that handle, by the way, completely blew up around 2018.

00:13:11.900 She's got nearly 100,000 followers.

00:13:13.960 She's even written a book about fertility.

00:13:15.760 She is a hardcore fertility influencer who talks about things on her account like uteruses and ovaries and sperm.

00:13:26.400 now in karen's other life she's a fourth grade dual language spanish and english teacher in a

00:13:34.440 public school outside new york city when her instagram account got really popular

00:13:38.520 she started to get nervous about her job

00:13:40.920 in my teaching contract the contract says that a teacher is allowed to be otherwise gainfully

00:13:52.700 employed as long as it is becoming of a teacher and that line as long as it is becoming of a

00:13:58.680 teacher was like kind of for me the gray area because I was like I know that what I'm doing

00:14:02.820 isn't wrong and I know that what I'm doing isn't bad however I teach fourth grade and the content

00:14:10.060 that I'm posting and that I'm talking about is not geared towards children. Karen had a long

00:14:15.820 conversation with her union organizer to try to figure out what the hell it meant to do something

00:14:21.680 that was unbecoming of a teacher content not becoming of a teacher is so vague so vague I mean

00:14:32.320 that is like the grayest of gray areas that I've ever seen in a contract well so that was a question 0.75

00:14:38.620 I was like I know that what I'm doing is wrong but like I'm talking about gynecological stuff 0.96

00:14:42.560 and reproductive stuff and I'm talking about penises and vaginas I'm talking about like when 0.99

00:14:45.960 men have to go give their donation and and basically masturbate in the little office that's 0.99

00:14:51.140 provided at the facility like i'm talking about all that i'm talking about the porn that's supplied 0.95

00:14:55.700 and how it's weird and it's all so awkward right and i'm and that's what i'm talking about

00:14:59.700 and my um my the president of my union at the time said no like what what it means is basically like

00:15:05.900 you can't be a stripper that was the analogy that he told me and i was like okay like i'm not being

00:15:12.160 a stripper but like i'm also talking about this other stuff too it was it was really interesting

00:15:16.340 After talking to Karen, I was convinced there had to be a much more clear legal line about what constituted unbecoming behavior for a teacher.

00:15:26.360 Unbecoming.

00:15:27.500 Like, there has to be some kind of legal explanation of this somewhere in the legal archives place where people make up rules for the world.

00:15:37.080 I also assumed that there had to be some kind of legal protection for teachers about what they were posting on social media.

00:15:43.400 That's part of the Constitution.

00:15:45.700 Yeah. So I found myself an expert, an expert on teachers and their First Amendment rights, specifically when it involves social media.

00:15:56.440 But first, a quick break.

00:15:58.380 okay so when i first found out that teachers were on the instagram because they're humans

00:16:14.400 i assumed there were legal guidelines for what a teacher could and couldn't do on social media

00:16:19.960 turns out that's a real funny assumption on my part i found a really good expert who could walk

00:16:25.580 me through it. My name is Mary Rose Papandrea, and I am the Samuel Ash Distinguished Professor

00:16:32.360 of Constitutional Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. That is such a fancy

00:16:38.420 title. I love it. I asked Professor Papandrea exactly how the hell she fell down this rabbit

00:16:45.500 hole of social media. How did any of us get here, by the way? And she told me that it was like most

00:16:51.420 things in life by accident. A very happy accident for her. She really likes this rabbit hole.

00:16:58.040 As do we all. I was very intrigued by what was going on in the public school arena and the First

00:17:05.380 Amendment because the Supreme Court has developed a whole separate jurisprudence that governs the

00:17:11.440 speech rights of public school students and also of government employees, which includes,

00:17:17.000 of course, public school teachers. So in these areas, the court does not follow the usual First

00:17:24.240 Amendment doctrine. And so the focus of my scholarly career has been focusing on these

00:17:29.520 areas where the normal rules of the First Amendment don't apply. I found Professor

00:17:35.480 Papandrea from an article in the North Carolina Law Review. It was titled Social Media, Public

00:17:41.460 school teachers and the First Amendment. It sounds very, very serious. And she totally had me

00:17:49.320 at the introduction. It is riveting. And it starts by describing how some school teachers

00:17:54.480 have been punished by their schools for their social media accounts. Here's a bit. Ashley Payne

00:18:00.040 was a 24-year-old public high school English teacher in Georgia when her principal called

00:18:04.800 her into his office to tell her that she could be suspended because of content on her personal

00:18:09.460 Facebook page. The objectionable content? Standard tourist photos of Payne drinking alcohol in

00:18:16.680 European beer gardens and cafes, and the fact that she attended, and this right here is my 0.80

00:18:22.080 favorite line in the whole article, a trivia contest called Crazy Bitch Bingo. 1.00

00:18:31.780 First off, I want to go to Crazy Bitch Bingo. Yeah, me too. That sounds fun. Sounds so fun. 0.98

00:18:38.480 And then there's another example where school officials found out that a Virginia teacher who had created artwork using her body parts and posted that.

00:18:50.580 And another instance where a Nashville teacher was fired after posting what are, quote, racy photos of herself on her MySpace profile.

00:18:59.160 another teacher was suspended for a month without pay because a fellow teacher posted a picture of

00:19:07.720 her on Facebook with a stripper at a bachelorette party like all of the I mean so this is this is

00:19:15.080 rich territory teachers being on social media posting their their lives also a lot of teachers

00:19:21.540 are in their 20s and 30s and they're I mean thank god social media was not like really a thing in

00:19:28.840 my 20s because I would never get a job ever again. That's right. That's right. Yes. No, I mean,

00:19:33.160 these stories that you're highlighting are what led me to write my article because I just felt

00:19:38.440 like, wow, this cannot be right. And, you know, without going into all the nitty gritty details

00:19:44.080 of this framework, I will say it's not clear that teachers have protection for anything they say on

00:19:51.640 social media that isn't political speech. If parents get outraged, if students get outraged,

00:20:00.700 if administrators think it makes the school look bad, it's not clear. And that's not a good place

00:20:07.160 to be for someone who's in trouble. You don't want to be told. And it's not clear that the

00:20:12.460 First Amendment protects your right to post your vacation photos on social media, even when you're

00:20:18.560 not directing them at your students or at the community at large. You're trying to communicate

00:20:24.420 with your friends. And so that's what happens in most of these cases. These teachers are not

00:20:29.580 sending racy pictures to their students. They're not telling their students about crazy bitch bingo 1.00

00:20:36.460 or whatever. That's not how these cases come about. They come about because somebody has seen it and 1.00

00:20:45.480 how they've seen it who knows but somehow they have have obtained access to the social media

00:20:51.500 account and it may get forwarded from one person to another in any event it gets to the attention

00:20:56.280 of the school and the school calls Ashley or whomever into the office and says this is making

00:21:02.520 us look bad so you better take it down or we're gonna put you on leave or fire you. I had one

00:21:09.580 listener send me a message and say she found out that her child's teacher was an influencer who 0.68

00:21:16.880 posed in bikinis and showed herself getting Botox and had sponsored Botox and things like that. 0.87

00:21:24.400 And she was a little appalled by it. It didn't meet her standards of what was okay. And the woman

00:21:31.480 was also doing it to make extra money because teachers are not paid enough, which is a whole 1.00

00:21:36.520 other can of worms that we're going to explore. But is what she's doing illegal? 1.00

00:21:43.440 Oh, gosh, it's not illegal. It's really distressing because the law does not clearly protect

00:21:49.340 this. But, you know, you're right to highlight it is something that comes up with public school

00:21:54.400 teachers in particular, rather than, say, you know, some other town worker or some other

00:22:00.680 employees. We care a lot about our teachers and how they're influencing our children. We hold our

00:22:07.860 teachers to a very high standard. And so if we see that they're posing in bikinis or going to 1.00

00:22:14.840 crazy bitch bingo or doing anything that is less than ideal, we don't like it. You know, one thing, 0.99

00:22:21.360 I can't remember whether this was in that article or not, but this whole controversy about teachers

00:22:25.980 on social media reminded me historically of when teachers would get fired if they got pregnant and

00:22:32.740 they weren't married you know that sort of thing yes yes because when you just said ideal I thought

00:22:40.880 you know but held to this quote ideal of what certain segment of society or society at large

00:22:47.940 expects from pure young women the kind of women that should be guiding our children's minds and 1.00

00:22:55.860 education and and yeah teachers used to get fired for getting pregnant right outside of marriage 1.00

00:23:01.860 right yeah because they're having sex and they're not married exactly

00:23:06.040 well and of course who is to say a bikini photo or botox is bad like where is the line

00:23:14.600 for what makes a parent uncomfortable and the fact is we're all googling our kids teachers now

00:23:21.260 But I haven't Googled my postman or my garbage man.

00:23:26.100 That's right.

00:23:27.380 That's right.

00:23:28.200 That's exactly right.

00:23:29.640 Yeah, it's very, it's very dangerous.

00:23:31.380 I wonder what, when the parents complain about these photos, I, I wonder what's going through

00:23:36.340 their minds.

00:23:36.920 I mean, maybe some of them are worried their children are seeing these photos and, and

00:23:42.780 then that's going to undermine their, you know, their, their moral development or something.

00:23:49.020 I don't know.

00:23:49.580 Mm hmm. I don't know. So it's just something about the Instagram is signaling that the teacher might not be appropriate, not appropriate.

00:24:01.960 Yes. Yeah, exactly. And so it feels wildly unfair in a lot of ways to judge young women for what they're posting about their social lives and to assume that they're unfit for a profession that I think is incredibly noble and should be paid much more money for what they do to shape the next generation of human beings in this world.

00:24:27.980 and yet that judgment persists and it's not just judgment because there is power as you said for

00:24:34.900 schools to dictate what these teachers can do right that's right yeah you know it's interesting

00:24:40.100 i i haven't done an empirical study on this but one thing worth highlighting as well is that it's 0.83

00:24:45.100 it is a lot of times the female teachers who are targeted um you know that may just not be

00:24:51.920 surprising at all to anyone listening but you know that women are held to a higher standard

00:24:56.700 you know and you know using that the historical example of women getting fired for being pregnant

00:25:02.880 I mean no one was firing a guy because he for getting someone pregnant yeah well and also I

00:25:10.560 think if a male teacher shows shows off pictures of himself at a beer garden in Germany I feel like

00:25:17.600 parents would be like look at him traveling the world and yeah and interacting with different

00:25:24.220 cultures. Whereas with a young women, there might be some parents that are like, well,

00:25:29.060 she seems like a drunk slut. And I'm taking it to the extreme, but I do feel like it's worth 1.00

00:25:36.020 taking to the extreme of how we view what women do versus how we do what men do. And it's just

00:25:43.360 so unfair. And we, correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe the majority of public school teachers

00:25:49.240 K through 12 are women, right? 0.52

00:25:52.100 Yes, I'm sure that's true.

00:25:56.280 Yeah, the hardest thing for me

00:25:57.980 when I was writing that article

00:25:59.660 is to figure out

00:26:00.680 when it would be appropriate

00:26:02.680 to punish a teacher

00:26:05.580 for something she did on social media.

00:26:08.360 And because I think saying carte blanche,

00:26:12.340 you know, people can post

00:26:13.340 whatever they want.

00:26:15.160 But certainly the kinds of things

00:26:16.880 we've been talking about

00:26:17.960 with teachers go nowhere close, like a vacation photos or, you know, bikini photos. Those really

00:26:23.960 should not reveal an unfitness to be a teacher. I played back Professor Papandrea's interview for

00:26:30.520 Glynis. Wow. Yeah. Right? Yeah. That part about firing pregnant teachers. I don't know if that

00:26:40.740 was the case when I was in grammar school. I don't know. Should we look it up and find out?

00:26:46.460 Yeah, although I went to Catholic school, and I'm pretty sure, and this might actually still be the case, that you not only getting pregnant outside of wedlock is grounds for dismissal, but like living with your boyfriend who's not your husband.

00:27:00.620 But isn't that like wild?

00:27:03.980 Here is an actual headline from June 28th, 2021.

00:27:08.480 An unmarried Catholic school teacher got pregnant.

00:27:12.280 She was fired.

00:27:13.940 Oh, so I'm remembering correctly, and I don't even need to remember because it's still happening.

00:27:19.440 And I bet their argument is it's on religious grounds.

00:27:21.600 But regardless of that, it's crazy to me the way we treat teachers.

00:27:29.040 It's insane.

00:27:30.320 We trust our children's well-being to teachers and then treat them so terribly and offer them zero protections in a world where, as we watch every day, there's so little protection in the public sphere anyway.

00:27:42.420 So you give them no resources, and when they turn to the internet to try and generate some for their classes, it leaves them vulnerable to...

00:27:50.220 Anything. Anything.

00:27:51.440 Yeah.

00:27:52.420 To public castigation, to losing their jobs, to losing their entire safety net, to...

00:27:59.040 It's amazing any of us leave the house, honestly.

00:28:07.840 Frankly, I do think it's amazing that any of us leave the house anymore.

00:28:11.180 I mean, not that we really leave the house that often, but, you know, the fact that any of us can still figure out a way to live in the world.

00:28:18.360 But what's even more amazing to me is that we do leave the house.

00:28:22.800 And when we leave, we take pictures of everything that we do, post them to the Internet, and then let everyone, including strangers and all of your high school ex-boyfriends, look at them.

00:28:34.980 Just get a window into your entire life. 1.00

00:28:37.960 I keep thinking about the crazy double standard that women teachers are held to. 1.00

00:28:44.040 If a dude teacher posted a picture of himself in a bathing suit, looking real good with the abs, 1.00

00:28:53.340 I don't think anyone would be complaining at all.

00:28:56.360 We would just, like, hire him to come train our husbands.

00:29:00.900 But I'm getting off course.

00:29:02.020 We're getting away from the real issue here, which is the fact that teachers, mostly women, turn to Instagram because they've got to make extra money because we're not paying them nearly enough for how much they work and how much of their own personal money they are spending on classroom supplies to make our kids' lives enriching and wonderful. 0.53

00:29:21.740 So, so far, we're talking about teachers who have been lifestyle influencers, fashion influencers, fertility influencers.

00:29:29.660 influencers, but there's also a whole genre of Instagram influencers that are teachers

00:29:36.340 influencing other teachers. It's called Teachergram, hashtag Teachergram. Follow it on your Insta if

00:29:42.640 you haven't already. And it exists so that these teachers can make some extra money, but also so

00:29:47.760 they can help out other teachers. And some of these women are making serious bank. More on that after 1.00

00:29:55.640 a quick break.

00:29:59.660 Hi guys, this is Mrs. Hooley in 5th.

00:30:06.580 You may know me from TikTok, Instagram.

00:30:08.480 My classroom I always repurchase.

00:30:10.780 First are my U-brand pens.

00:30:12.500 I get them at Target, but I think you can buy them elsewhere as well.

00:30:15.380 They write so sweet.

00:30:16.080 So my students are obsessed with the song Havana,

00:30:18.640 so I turned it into a skip counting song.

00:30:21.120 This is how we count by fours.

00:30:24.080 I can count by fours.

00:30:26.080 Those are the dulcet tones of TeacherGram.

00:30:32.160 This is a place where teachers influence other teachers.

00:30:36.320 It is a way for teachers to have a side hustle in a pretty wholesome way.

00:30:41.200 And if it wasn't for that Reddit thread at the beginning of this episode,

00:30:44.240 I would find it pretty hard to believe that any parents objected to this kind of influencing at all from their kids' teachers.

00:30:51.340 But apparently, some do.

00:30:53.940 Someone hates everything.

00:30:56.080 I reached out and I talked to a lot of teacher Graham influencers,

00:30:59.300 and I found one who I think really encapsulates this world,

00:31:01.800 who was really excited to talk to me about why she does this

00:31:05.720 and why she wants to influence other teachers. 0.97

00:31:09.940 Off of my teaching salary.

00:31:11.780 I could not have paid my rent and my living expenses.

00:31:15.780 Like, I didn't even have a car payment.

00:31:17.100 I didn't have debt from college.

00:31:19.060 Like, literally just my typical living expenses.

00:31:21.800 So for me, the only way I was even able to make that move is because I had that supplemental income.

00:31:29.240 That's Michelle Emerson. 0.97

00:31:31.540 She's a second grade teacher and a very good entrepreneur. 0.95

00:31:36.580 She's got 173,000 Instagram followers on her account Pocketful of Primary and more than a half a million subscribers on YouTube.

00:31:45.000 She sells various products like attendance trackers for virtual learning,

00:31:49.380 email templates to go to parents,

00:31:51.140 and all other kinds of teaching resources and organization products

00:31:55.080 to make teachers' lives easier. 1.00

00:31:57.160 She does it all on social media, and her business is freaking thriving.

00:32:01.100 I will say that three years in, I matched my teaching income,

00:32:07.620 and I remember that was like a shock.

00:32:10.160 I didn't think it was possible when I started it.

00:32:12.300 I remember telling my parents that was a goal

00:32:14.260 and they're like, all right, Michelle, good luck.

00:32:16.180 But I was able to match my income three years in.

00:32:20.140 And then beyond that, it's just continued to grow,

00:32:23.060 which was interesting because it went from like my side hustle

00:32:25.560 to really my main source of income,

00:32:27.700 which again, took off the pressure of,

00:32:29.940 I can work in whatever district I want,

00:32:32.440 whatever school I want.

00:32:33.520 It's not about the paycheck.

00:32:35.000 It's I want to find the right fit for me.

00:32:36.680 And it takes off a lot of that stress and pressure.

00:32:39.160 What I really wanted to know was how Michelle got here,

00:32:41.160 how she got onto the teachergram in the first place.

00:32:44.620 And her story was a really familiar one

00:32:46.420 if you listen to season one.

00:32:48.120 Michelle got on social media 1.00

00:32:49.520 because she was trying to navigate a new job.

00:32:52.880 She wanted to figure out how to be a better teacher

00:32:54.740 and she wanted some community.

00:32:57.620 As a new teacher, you have your instruction from college,

00:33:00.080 but you get into the classroom

00:33:01.720 and it's a totally different ball game.

00:33:04.020 And I was in a district

00:33:05.460 where we didn't really have a curriculum.

00:33:06.960 I was having to do everything myself.

00:33:09.440 And so I needed as many ideas as I could get.

00:33:13.120 I wanted ideas for classroom management because it's not a topic you receive a lot of instruction on in college.

00:33:20.360 It's kind of like, well, you'll just figure it out in the classroom.

00:33:22.840 And then I got in the classroom. It's like, hold on, I'm struggling in this area in terms of those routines, those procedures, those different incentive systems that you can implement.

00:33:31.960 That's so interesting because we heard the same thing from mom influencers in season one that so many women were looking, trying to find out how to be moms, right?

00:33:43.240 They were like, there's no, like, I know, I know how to set up my baby shower registry and I know how to paint my nursery, but I don't know how to manage my time or manage my own emotions.

00:33:54.320 And so they were looking for community.

00:33:56.840 So do you think that a lot of teachers were looking for community? 0.98

00:33:59.140 Because let's be honest, being a teacher is fucking hard. 0.68

00:34:03.020 I think community is a huge aspect of it. 0.97

00:34:05.180 I know for me, that's something I found a lot of solace in because I didn't connect very well with my team teachers during my first year of teaching.

00:34:12.280 They were a fair amount older than I was, and I just didn't connect with them.

00:34:16.900 And so being able to find these other teachers who were around my age or even older where they had more experience and I could kind of look up to them.

00:34:25.100 But then also these people who were going through the same thing I was, it was their first year of teaching or even student teaching. And I felt like for me, that was more like the realistic version. So I could see like, here's the ideal. And then here's also kind of the real side of it that I can better relate to.

00:34:43.880 Right, right, right, right. Are those kinds of things taught to you when you're getting a bachelor's?

00:34:48.880 Not at all.

00:34:50.100 And for me, after my first year of teaching,

00:34:53.360 knowing how much I struggled,

00:34:54.820 and it's because college does not adequately prepare you

00:34:57.620 for what the classroom is like,

00:34:58.940 and then all of a sudden it's like

00:34:59.980 you're pushed out of the nest,

00:35:01.460 and it's like, figure it out on your own.

00:35:03.220 And that's really hard.

00:35:04.860 And I didn't feel like enough teachers

00:35:06.480 were talking about that,

00:35:08.100 about the struggle that comes along with it.

00:35:10.480 And so my goal kind of became, you know what,

00:35:12.920 if I can make someone else's first year of teaching easier

00:35:15.640 because they better understand the realities of teaching,

00:35:19.200 then it's all worth it.

00:35:21.560 Since then, Michelle has turned her Instagram,

00:35:23.840 her lesson plans,

00:35:24.800 and all of the products that she makes for teachers 0.99

00:35:26.660 into big business.

00:35:28.740 I mean, I will tell you,

00:35:29.760 she still does not love the term influencer,

00:35:32.540 which is fair.

00:35:33.220 We've talked about that before.

00:35:34.360 When I hear the term influencer,

00:35:36.260 to me, an influencer is just someone

00:35:37.860 who promotes other people's products.

00:35:39.720 And in my opinion, I'm like, I have my own brand.

00:35:42.760 I have my own business.

00:35:44.060 and that wasn't what I initially set out for.

00:35:47.780 I mean, I started selling teacher resources

00:35:49.680 because I needed money.

00:35:50.820 I was spending a ton in my classroom.

00:35:53.500 What she's saying here is not that she needed money

00:35:55.680 to live on, even though she needed that.

00:35:58.540 We all gotta live. 0.90

00:35:59.800 She needed money for teaching supplies for her classroom.

00:36:02.940 And I still can't wrap my head around the fact 0.91

00:36:06.520 that teachers have to pay for their own classroom supplies. 0.57

00:36:11.620 It's gross. 0.55

00:36:12.900 It's just gross.

00:36:14.940 Yeah, that was one of the biggest shockers

00:36:16.840 going into my first year.

00:36:18.080 I knew I would be spending my own money.

00:36:20.940 I just don't think I realized how much.

00:36:23.180 I want to say my first year of teaching total,

00:36:25.720 I probably spent minimum $5,000 out of my own pocket.

00:36:28.860 Oh my God, really?

00:36:30.460 Because you see these pictures of classrooms

00:36:33.240 and it's like, you're not given any of that,

00:36:36.080 at least in most cases.

00:36:37.000 I'm sure there are schools and districts

00:36:38.300 where they do provide a lot.

00:36:39.600 But I walk into an empty classroom,

00:36:41.700 I have to get the bins and containers to be able to organize all of my supplies.

00:36:46.560 I had to purchase a lot of the supplies out of my own pocket.

00:36:49.940 And when I had students coming to school that didn't have certain materials,

00:36:52.920 I'm going to supply that for them.

00:36:55.500 Right, right.

00:36:56.080 And I just, yeah, I don't think that we think about that.

00:36:59.260 And then the fact that we think about the teachers aren't being paid nearly enough

00:37:03.200 that, you know, it can be precarious to think, all right, can I make rent this month?

00:37:08.020 So by having this second business, this second career almost, have you been able to become a lot more financially secure and then comfortable in doing what you do love?

00:37:20.600 Yeah, 100%. I think back to, again, my first year I was on the struggle bus trying to figure out how do I balance, you know, the money coming in versus what I'm spending.

00:37:31.780 Decided to start trying to supplement my income by selling resources here and there.

00:37:36.820 Three years after Michelle started teaching, she moved to a different part of Maryland, 0.92

00:37:40.860 a part that was like super expensive.

00:37:44.400 My teaching income went up by like $2,000 or $3,000.

00:37:48.760 It wasn't a significant increase, but my rent to the dollar doubled.

00:37:53.860 I was on the eastern shore of Maryland, and when I moved to the western shore,

00:37:57.340 closer to like D.C., Annapolis, my rent literally doubled. 0.93

00:38:01.280 But she could handle it because of her side hustle, because of Instagram and YouTube, 1.00

00:38:05.340 and the fact that teachers would pay her for some of her teacher products.

00:38:09.800 And for me, that move, I ended up in a much better school that just fit me,

00:38:14.160 my personality, my teaching style, which allowed my passion for teaching to grow even more.

00:38:19.660 Because we want our teachers to be happy.

00:38:22.560 We need the people that are teaching our children to be able to feel supported.

00:38:29.120 I mean, that just feels like a fundamental human right at this point.

00:38:35.340 Yeah, and I think one of the biggest issues when it comes down to teachers and the income, it's all the work behind the scenes that people don't even see and the number of hours outside of just contract hours that go into those lessons and go into just being a teacher.

00:38:50.860 And so when you're constantly overworked, you're putting in all of this time, all of this energy, and not only does your paycheck not reflect that, but you kind of have this feeling of like not being appreciated. It's like no one even notices the work that you're doing. And I think that's another way social media in general can kind of highlight those realities and parents can better understand like all the work that goes into what the teachers are doing.

00:39:17.880 So I'm scrolling through your Instagram.

00:39:20.360 And this is essentially just like a beautiful magazine of what it is to be a teacher.

00:39:26.020 Like this is like real simple, but in teacher world, everything is very bright.

00:39:30.440 And it's just like very, is that a cupcake with poop on top?

00:39:34.780 Oh, yes.

00:39:35.360 That was, amidst the pandemic, one of our coworkers gave everyone a cupcake with literally the icing was like a piece of poop.

00:39:43.140 And it was so on brand and like exactly what we were all dealing with at the time.

00:39:47.880 I think we should all enjoy a cupcake with poop on it.

00:39:55.000 Icing. 0.52

00:39:55.640 That is poop.

00:39:56.660 Oh, all right.

00:39:58.520 Maybe not.

00:39:59.300 Maybe, maybe just a cupcake.

00:40:01.700 But the poop cupcake really does sum up our country, doesn't it?

00:40:06.960 We're just living in a poop cupcake.

00:40:09.200 I came into this episode with so many mixed feelings.

00:40:13.560 Like Jesse, I didn't really want to see my kids' teachers.

00:40:17.880 And just to be clear, I have not seen my kids' teachers on Instagram.

00:40:20.820 There is a church and state thing going on in my kids' school.

00:40:24.440 But I don't know how I'd feel if I was watching their private lives on the gram.

00:40:31.420 It feels like a massive invasion of privacy.

00:40:36.480 But then there's also sort of no privacy at all anymore for anyone.

00:40:41.980 It's like our whole world is one big public space.

00:40:46.500 And teachers are people just like anyone who live in that public space.

00:40:51.060 So I don't know what kind of standards a teacher's Instagram should be held to, if any.

00:40:57.840 And I can also see how some parts of Teachergram could be really intimidating for other teachers. 0.98

00:41:04.140 How looking at a perfect classroom makes you think, fuck, my classroom doesn't look like this. 0.98

00:41:09.860 My classroom's never going to look like this. 0.99

00:41:11.580 Because that's how I feel when I look at every other mother's account on Instagram.

00:41:15.740 And I also understand how during this dumpster fire of a pandemic, teachers are completely stretched to their limits, the same way parents have been, and they have to turn to Instagram to find community, the same way that I'm turning to other moms.

00:41:29.920 This platform is a monetary side hustle for so many, but for even more people, it's an emotional crutch. 0.98

00:41:35.720 What I think is so interesting about this episode is that what we see in the world of influencing continues to just be a microcosm of the massive problems that women are facing in our fucked up country. 0.96

00:41:51.460 Right. And one of the reasons for that is that there's the potential to make tons of money. 1.00

00:41:55.980 There's an absence of rules and then women get into it. And of course, the absence of protection 1.00

00:42:00.000 makes them vulnerable in so many more ways than men ever are. And vulnerable because they go into

00:42:08.220 it with less financial security and vulnerable for all the ways we know when we're vulnerable

00:42:11.660 online. And then when it breaks us and we have massive mental health problems and depression

00:42:19.000 and anxiety. We have no health care to take care of us. And then, and then you know what happens

00:42:24.840 next? Then women turn to mental health influencers to try to get help. 1.00

00:42:32.500 I think I might be wearing a jumpsuit from one of those mental health influencers right now. 1.00

00:42:37.980 Her name rhymes with Puinis Galtrow.

00:42:41.880 So guess what, guess what next week's episode is? Did I give too much away?

00:42:45.940 if you guess you can have some free mental health from unlicensed

00:42:52.980 a couple months ago i asked all of you on my instagram to tell me a mental health

00:43:01.980 influencer that you follow someone you admire someone that helps you get out of bed in the

00:43:06.560 morning the responses were insane i got more than 2 000 comments and dms that is a lot of comments

00:43:14.300 and DMs. And I did not expect that. I didn't expect that almost everyone I know follows

00:43:19.920 someone on Instagram to try to make their life just a little bit easier and a little bit better

00:43:24.960 on a daily basis. Mental health on Instagram. It is a topic so huge, so massive, so far-reaching

00:43:34.060 that we're devoting the next two episodes to it.

00:43:44.300 If there's a tightrope of 50% good, 50% can do public harm,

00:43:52.880 I feel like mental health influencers kind of thread that line and lean towards the harm side.

00:43:58.660 Moms are desperate for support, and there's not a lot of options for the type of support people really need.

00:44:06.640 And when they find it, they want more of it.

00:44:10.120 Mothers, we are the hardest on ourselves and the hardest on each other to continue to feed into the myth.

00:44:16.260 Because no one's given us permission to say, you know what? 0.97

00:44:19.440 This sucks. 0.59

00:44:20.540 This is really hard. 0.98

00:44:22.460 Yeah, I think my baby's cute.

00:44:24.640 And then the rest of the time, I feel like I made a huge mistake.

00:44:28.020 And I miss my old life.

00:44:30.560 See you next week.

00:44:33.540 Under the Influence is hosted and reported by me, Joe Piazza.

00:44:37.600 Our senior producer is Emily Marino.

00:44:40.060 Glynis McNichol is our editor.

00:44:42.060 Abu Zafar is our producer.

00:44:44.080 We got additional production help from Aaron Peterson.

00:44:46.600 And our associate producer is Lauren Phillip.

00:44:49.180 Sound design and mixing from Jackie Huntington.

00:44:52.060 Our theme was composed by the wonderful Jessica Kronchich.

00:44:56.400 Additional music by Jessica Kronchich and Jackie Huntington.

00:45:00.500 Anna Stumpf is our consulting producer.

00:45:02.100 And we are executive produced by me, Joe, and Nikki Torr.

00:45:07.160 Special thanks to Christina Everett, Julia Weaver, Lindsay Hoffman, Anna Stumpf, and Morgan Lavoie for being the very angry voices of our pissed off parent Reddit thread.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - February 24, 2022

Rule 35

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