We’re thrilled to be on this career journey with you. You’ve spent time, effort and lots of money on the road to a great education. Your teacher student loan debt baggage may be weighing you down, but we want you to know you’re not alone.

Your first step is to find out what kind of student loan baggage you’re carrying and if it’s eligible for forgiveness. You can do this by locating your paperwork information on the National Student Loan Data System site. If you have a Federal Stafford Loan or a Federal Perkins Loan, you may qualify for forgiveness.

Before you consider refinancing or consolidating any of your student loans, keep in mind that only federal student loans can be forgiven. If you have federal loans and you refinance or consolidate them into private student loans, that debt won’t be eligible for forgiveness anymore.

Next, check out our NEA Student Debt Navigator tool. As an NEA member, you can run your numbers at no cost to find out what programs you may qualify for as an educator that could help you reduce or possibly even eliminate your student loan debt.

To determine your eligibility for payment reduction and your potential savings, you’ll just need to provide some information about yourself and your loans. The tool will analyze your information and display available repayment and forgiveness options for comparison.

If you decide to enroll in a forgiveness or repayment program, the tool can help you file the required information with the Department of Education.

Now that you’re headed in the right direction, you can find more information on our Student Loan Debt resource page. We’re excited to be on this journey with you and want to help you reduce your teacher student loan debt so you can stay the course as an educator.