Teachers are leaving the profession, and college students are not choosing to go into teaching leaving us with a drastic teacher shortage. This is because of several reasons: lack of respect and support; not being treated as professionals; increased administrative demands; legislators writing laws that negatively affect public schools with no regard to the input from teachers; larger class sizes; schools getting measured on their success by standardized testing but with the difficulty of the tests increasing over time; very little unencumbered time to plan lessons, grade papers, contact parents, post grades, post homework on school website, document behavior, change bulletin boards, etc.; no free time to eat lunch or go to the restroom; extra duties such as breakfast duty, bus duty, car rider duty, morning hall duty, recess duty, etc.; being required to attend professional development courses to continually update license (even with an advanced degree and over 25 years experience); being able to earn much more money in another career; having to spend their own money to buy school, art, and cleaning supplies for their classrooms; and the list goes on.
Schools are trying to solve this problem by making class sizes larger, having “virtual teachers” in classes where the students open their Chromebooks to watch the teacher online while a paraprofessional attends to the class’ behavior and safety (but usually can’t answer questions about class content), and hiring teachers from other countries to come teach here, which sometimes causes a problem with students understanding the teacher because of the teacher’s accent. I saw a post on Facebook from Lancaster County where many parents were complaining about their children having this problem causing their grades to slip.
If we want to have teachers in person in all/most of our classrooms who come from our area again, we need to support and respect teachers, treat them as professionals, communicate better with them when there is a problem instead of going on social media to gossip about how bad the schools and/or teachers are, volunteer in classrooms to help teachers whenever possible, support teachers when they call with concerns about your child’s progress or behavior, donate supplies for the classroom, teach your children the importance of respecting their teacher, don’t make negative comments about your child’s teacher in front of him/her, if there is a problem, contact the teacher to communicate directly with her/him, and convince our state legislators to write laws that support public education and our teachers.
If a parent or guardian finds one’s child in a situation such as discussed in the post with a teacher s/he can’t understand because of an accent, the first step is to have a series of earnest conversations with the teacher, working together, to try to come up with a solution to help the student. Examples of this could be copies of the class lecture notes, tutoring during extra flex time or before/after school, recommendations for tutorial websites or videos, et cetera. If the student continues to fail even after working through solutions with the teacher, or if the teacher fails to provide any help (extremely rare), the parent should meet with the principal to discuss the issue and explain how they have already tried to work out a solution for the child to do well in the class with the teacher. Most school administrators will earnestly work with the parent, teacher, and student to help the student succeed. The key is for the parent to remain calm and respectful (yet assertive if need be while remaining professional) explaining that s/he wants to work with the school to help the student succeed. Parents should remember that schools are doing the best that they can given the resources they are provided, with teachers working long hours with little time to plan lessons or grade papers, or even go to the bathroom or eat. Remaining polite to work together to develop a solution is key; however, if they still cannot develop a plan to help the student succeed in the class after working together with the teacher and school administrators, the parent should let his/her School Board representative and the school district Superintendent know about the student’s failure in the class and how the parent has already tried working with the teacher and school administrators to develop a solution. The Board and Superintendent should know how the teacher shortage and need for foreign teachers are affecting some students. They may also be able to devise a solution that the principal did not have the power or money to do. But remember that the School Board and Superintendent are not the ones responsible for the teacher shortage; if they were, it would only be affecting our district. It is affecting our entire state and region.
There are two other solutions that will help the teacher shortage regarding retired teachers returning to the classroom to teach in these high-needs classes. First, there is a state law that states retired teachers can’t return to work for the state and make more than $10,000 while still drawing their retirement. They can go work for any private company making more than they earned teaching and still draw their retirement, so why can’t they fill these high-needs classrooms while making a regular salary? No one would take on the pressures of a current classroom for only $10,000. Second, there should be a change to state law to allow retired teachers to return to the classroom without having to continue professional development to renew their license every five years. Most of these teachers have at least a master’s degree plus 28 years of teaching experience. If a teacher has spent a career in the classroom and is willing to return to help solve the teacher shortage, s/he shouldn’t have to renew his/her license every five years. Retired teachers should be issued a permanent teacher’s license.
It is imperative that we elect legislators who will support public education and our public school teachers. We must start respecting our teachers again and treating them like the professionals they are. We must demand our legislators fully fund public education. Public education is important for a healthy fully-functioning democracy and for our country’s economic health, and we need to protect it.
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