EdSurge senior reporter Emily Tate Sullivan gained a prime journalism prize this month for her work documenting the persistent, nationwide downside of low trainer pay in america.
The Training Writers Affiliation named Tate Sullivan the winner of a 2022 Nationwide Award for Training Reporting within the beat reporting class. The respect acknowledges a group of 5 tales she reported and wrote final 12 months concerning the monetary issue many educators face, the methods they use to make ends meet, and doable options for enhancing compensation for academics.
“In practically each interplay I had with a trainer, together with interviews for unrelated tales, they’d inform me earlier than hanging up how they had been fed up and pondering of leaving, that circumstances of their faculty group had deteriorated, and that the compensation for what was requested of them had change into extra insulting than they may bear,” Tate Sullivan wrote in her award submission letter. “On the identical time, faculty districts had been reporting hundreds of unfilled employees openings. As a nation, we couldn’t afford to lose our academics. However I questioned, may we afford to maintain them?”
Marisa Busch served because the editor for these articles. One in all 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 faculty academics must work a second job exterior of the classroom to make ends meet.

They embrace third grade trainer Cara Rothrock, who clocks hours at Polly’s Freeze, a roadside restaurant in Indiana. And center faculty 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 Training Writers Affiliation is knowledgeable affiliation for journalists. Newsrooms submitted greater than 400 entries to the 2022 Nationwide Awards for Training Reporting. The competitors was independently judged by 118 present and former editors and reporters.
That is the second time Tate Sullivan has taken dwelling a Nationwide Award for Training Reporting. She gained an award for characteristic writing for her 2020 story about an Ohio preschool that helps the youngest victims of the opioid disaster.