I'm not paid for all the time I spend teaching. It's pathetic my generation is OK with this scam.

I spoke recently with my daughter who teaches at a high school not far from the one at which I teach. We talk often, by phone, during our commutes through Los Angeles traffic.

This time, I listened to her concerns about a class her principal has assigned her to teach. The class is ethnic studies, and what concerns my daughter is that she is not a social studies teacher; her credential is in art.

Ethnic studies has just become a graduation requirement in California, but that doesn’t explain why an art teacher would be asked to teach it. Together, we thought of a possible reason – the school’s only social studies teacher is white; my daughter is not.

Regardless of the reason, my daughter was mostly concerned about the time it would take her to create a new course that she is not qualified to teach.

At that I had to laugh. In my 30 years, I have, without hesitation, taught out of my credential many times – physical education, computer science, economics and, actually, an ethnic studies-like class called “Cultural Heritage” (my credential is in English Language Arts).

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I’ve always figured this is what teachers do. Whatever we are asked to and then some. Whatever it is the kids need to learn or – more often – what they need credits in to graduate or to satisfy the entrance requirements for state universities.

Unpaid overtime comes with teaching

The extra time and effort and stress of creating and teaching new classes, and sometimes having to research and learn the subject ourselves? It comes with the territory. Along with all the rest of the unpaid overtime.

And if you don’t submit, then you must not care about your students. I’ve seen teachers shamed that way into chaperoning dances and proms without compensation. I’ve seen students used as agents of that shame.

Come to think of it, I wasn’t always so enthusiastic about the exploitation.

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During my third year as a teacher, my principal dragged me to an education conference luncheon and introduced me to other administrators from other schools as one of her hardest-working and dedicated teachers. Other principals then bragged about how hardworking their teachers were, how much extra work they did, how much they sacrificed “for the kids.”

I found myself setting down my fork and telling those administrators, the one to whom I reported and the ones I didn’t know, that exploiting people wasn’t something to brag about. “If you’re so damn impressed with us, then why don’t you figure out how to get us paid for all that extra time,” I asked.

They laughed it off, brushed aside my concerns by pivoting to their own sacrifices. And I let it go – although I’ve always appreciated any administrator who has made it a priority to respect our time and find ways to pay us for at least some of the extra work, even if we would do it anyway for the sake of the kids.

I should probably be encouraged – proud too – that my daughter is much less interested in the manipulation and martyrdom to which I mostly have succumbed. And hopeful that her attitude reflects a change among young educators.

Salaries trail cost of living

It sure as hell ought to, especially in cities, like the one in which we both live, where teacher salaries have not kept up with the cost of living and where home ownership has gone from elusive to pretty much impossible.

And especially in 2022, when everyone who works in a school is asked to do so much more and with no end to that in sight.

There is still room for self-sacrifice. I suspect there always will be.

Donating money to a student’s family in crisis, paying for a prom ticket for a kid with no family or offering a lift home to a terrified student who got attacked or threatened on the way home the day before, writing college recommendations, helping with personal statements for college outside the school day, co-signing a college tuition obligation for a kid without responsible parents. And on and on.

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But maybe the next generation of teachers can make headway in getting schools – administrators, districts, politicians, taxpayers – to reasonably pay us for our time (or at least some of the overtime) and for the material needs of our classes.

You know, maybe art teachers like my daughter won’t have to use their own money for basic art supplies or else use their time to raise money for supplies.

It's kind of pathetic that my generation of teachers has surrendered to this scam.

In my district, we are required to be at school for a little more than seven-hour days, even though we are paid for six. If we come late or leave early, we get docked, but if we come in early or stay late, we are not compensated.

We are admonished not to use a school-issued computer for personal use, but many of us burn out our personal machines for work use, especially with all the remote teaching of the past two years.

So I’m not about to tell my daughter or any other young teacher to work for free or spend personal funds for the sake of kids.

If we really care about kids, we ought to think about where this exploitation of teachers by emotional manipulation and intimidation has gotten us – massive resignations and retirements, and not nearly enough young people willing to step into those empty classrooms.

Other workers are hurt even more

Of course, it’s bigger – way bigger – than teachers or the public education system. Most teachers have unions; millions of other workers suffer far greater abuses and degradations.

And as an educator, the conditions for all workers ought to matter no less than my own.

I mean if I really do care about the kids. Many of them are already part of a labor force that is finally pushing back against the abuses. But their prospects for prosperity remain buried beneath grim shadows of corporate greed and obscene concentrations of wealth and power that leave most workers groping for survival.

A few weeks ago, a student asked me to advise him about whether to quit his job at Taco Bell. He said he had turned 18 and could now earn more money with less stress working in a warehouse. I wondered what he was asking me to solve. Was that even a choice?

But he didn’t see himself giving a Fortune 1000 fast-food corporation what it deserved. He felt bad about walking out on the manager who had hired him and would have to keep on running that place, a grown man trying to take care of his family and already understaffed and struggling.

He felt bad about making things even harder for that guy.

Imagine what the lives of workers would be like if the people with the money and the power had half the humanity of this kid.

Larry Strauss has been a high school English teacher in South Los Angeles since 1992. He is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors and the author of more than a dozen books, including "Students First and Other Lies: Straight Talk From a Veteran Teacher" and his new novel, "Light Man." Follow him on Twitter: @LarryStrauss

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Teachers should be paid for their time in school, use of own supplies.