Looking through my local newspaper the last couple of mornings, I've noticed a lot of negativity regarding the walkout for teachers on May 16. Almost every county in North Carolina cancelled school for the day, and teachers are protesting in Raleigh for better pay, as well as better resources and funding to benefit students.

Though pay has been trending upward for North Carolina teachers with a 4.8% raise last year, inflation means that teachers actually have $5,000 less in purchasing power today compared to 2013. Additionally, even with this increase in teacher pay, North Carolina remains 39th in the nation and well below the national average. Even with the Democrat-proposed 8% increase, pay would still remain well below the national average.

A lot of the letters to the editor I've seen this week say that teachers are already overpaid and underworked. That doesn't sound quite right to me.

The arguments tend to be ideas like: "They only work nine months out of the year," and "The job is easy."

Teachers are only technically instructing students during the school year. However, for many teachers work extends well beyond the end of year and the school day - it includes AP grading, it includes planning for the next year, it includes lesson plans on weekends, it includes grading outside of the workday, and it includes countless other tasks that aren't part of the hours teachers are technically with students.

More than that, a lot of the teachers I know have kids of their own. Imagine, you're with a classroom of 30 or more kids of different learning abilities, different backgrounds, and different ideas about "appropriate behavior." Then, you go home, you help your kids with their homework, you fix dinner, you do bathtime, you do bedtime, and then it's 9:00 before you've had a grown-up minute to yourself. A friend and I were talking about it last night, and there's no way we could do it. I think if we're honest with ourselves, most of us couldn't do it.

The workload is heavy and the job is far from easy. There's certainly not an argument in there for saying teachers are underworked and overpaid. Absolutely the opposite. These are not "whiny complaints" from "snowflakes" or whatever else you would like to call it. These are students and teachers standing up for the rights they should have as part of the public education system.

Something I find important to note is the fact that the people writing these letters to the editor would likely not be able to read or write or even hold whatever job it is they have without the teachers in their lives.

From personal experience, I can speak to the need for better resources and better funding for North Carolina public schools. I attended the top school in Guilford County, Northwest Guilford, for my junior and senior years of high school. Incidentally, the school is also among the lowest funded in a county with already low funding. The most obvious example of this is the mobiles that are used to house the entire social studies department ("The Classiest Trailer Park in America"). The mobiles were intended to be a fixture of the campus for a maximum of five years, and have now been part of campus for more than ten. Even seemingly simple things, like textbooks, are poorly funded. My AP Environmental Science textbook (still in use today) was published in 1997, and the Civics textbook, also still in use, cites Barack Obama only as a senator from Illinois.

Funding matters. Funding is the difference between strong students who become strong leaders, good doctors, ethical businesspeople, talented writers and musicians and artists and athletes, honest lawyers... the list could go on and on. We need scientists who can extend technological development, accountants who can simplify the tax process for everybody else, doctors who can keep us healthy... If students are learning from dated textbooks, especially in current events classes, they are unlikely to have a strong knowledge base, which in turn may lead to unrealized passions and potentials.

The timing may not be convenient, but then when would it be? It would cease to be impactful in the summer, which is fast approaching. So, perhaps the walkouts are not ideal, but they are necessary. The state of North Carolina needs a change. Teachers and students BOTH deserve better. Walkouts are the first step in that direction, hopefully.