Raquel Carey, a 26-year-old English teacher at a high school in Florida, is the essence of the modern teacher’s jack-of-all-trades and resourcefulness. Her main day job of influencing young minds is supported financially by a star system of side enterprises that collectively earn her $20,000 a year. “I have a few sides,” Carey said to Newsweek, juggling her dual existence as a teacher and entrepreneur. Her situation reveals endemic problems in teacher compensation and the innovative extremes workers employ to make ends meet.
The financial reality for teachers in Florida
One of the lowest paying states in the nation, Florida keeps teacher salaries from rising with inflation and escalating cost of living. For Carey, whose starting salary as a three-year veteran is less than $50,000, side hustles are not an option but a necessity. “They are my way of building a stable future,” she said. That’s life for co-workers across the state: Abigail Capellini, a third-grade teacher, earns extra income shooting photos at weddings, and Jamie Delerme, a single mother, works 85-hour weeks teaching and food delivery for Uber Eats. The National Education Association places teachers’ present salaries at $3,600 lower annually than they were a decade ago, when adjusted for inflation.
Layering income streams with multiple hustles
Carey’s strategy is to stack income streams. Besides teaching, she coaches soccer, test-takes tutoring, sells Teachers Pay Teachers lesson plans, and Facebook Marketplace postings, which she monetize. The diversified model has less risk—when one hustle is sluggish, others sustain her. My biggest project is creating learning and lifestyle content on TikTok,” she said, citing the way online platforms have shifted the way she gets paid. Similarly, Teachers Pay Teachers enables educators like Carey to make passive income by selling teaching materials, yet payback is decidedly skewed based on content difficulty and popularity.
Content creation as a money-making venture
Carey earned five figures in one month on TikTok live-streaming in February 2024—a pace of earnings she describes as impossible to sustain in the long term. She shifted to brand partnerships and the TikTok Shop, leveraging her platform’s influence to sell sponsored posts and affiliate marketing. “This platform has opened doors to user-generated content and creative opportunities,” she said. Her path mirrors broader trends: teachers are more and more turning to social media to commercialize knowledge, though with algorithmic risk demanding adaptability.
Entrepreneurship and teaching balance
Multitasking means balancing roles sensitively and allocating time effectively. Carey’s teaching extends beyond the classroom as she coaches tennis and the Brain Brawl academic team, working often late nights and weekends. But she still manages to create content, which she operates as a second shift. “It’s about capturing what is most important to me,” she explained. This balancing act is precariously close to burnout. Capellini, for instance, goes on social media after bedtime, and Delerme survives on two or three hours of nighttime sleep.
Wider implications for education
Carey’s grind is the outcome of a breakdown at the systems level to appreciate educators as of worth. Florida’s political environment intensifies such stresses: new legislation, such as HB 1069, sanctions teachers for using students’ preferred gender identities without parental permission, creating hostile working environments. Brevard County teacher Melissa Calhoun was fired for using a student’s preferred name—a stark reminder of the politicized restrictions teachers are under. Such policies repel talent and heighten staffing shortages, which lead districts to import unqualified substitutes.
A plea for systemic change
Side hustles bring temporary relief, but educators call for structural reform.
“We should be paid competitively,” Capellini asserted, explaining that teachers “work with the future of our nation”. Carey’s entrepreneurial zeal is inspiring but cannot be an effective long-term answer. Legislators need to tackle wage stagnation and value educators’ professionalism so teachers can concentrate on classrooms, not survival jobs. Until that time, Carey’s tale and hers only will stand for a failed system, wherein love of teaching must compete with economic need. Carey’s tale—a battle of wills and imagination—speaks to personal determination as much as to systemic failure. Navigating the “many aspects” of her life, her tale is a cry for treating teachers not just in principle, but in decent pay and generous policy.
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