Why is there a teacher shortage?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's why I left teaching:
1. Disrespectful kids whose parents have taught them they're always right and everyone else should work around them
2. Everyone having "special needs" like being allergic to perfume, being vegan, gluten free, nut free, non verbal learning disorder, etc. I couldn't deal with it all.
3. Standardized testing preparation. Instead of doing fun lessons, for a large part of the year we were doing test prep

Yes, if the pay was better and I felt kids and parents would respect me and other teachers, I'd love to teach again. I think I was a great and very creative teacher, but it's just draining and not worth it to me anymore.

LOL! At #2

[Anonymous]

I think the most annoying aspect of being a teacher is this strange culture around paperwork, “professional responsibilities” and all the non student facing elements of the job. There’s always this weird undercurrent of “you’ll be in trouble if...” you get caught without x form, you aren’t taking enough data, your lesson plans aren’t detailed enough, you’re not organizing certain things in a specific and obsessive format, you don’t have your bulletin board rubrics formatted how they’ve directed and updated each week, etc.

I’m an adult, I don’t care if you’re mad at me about a meaningless form? It’s bizarre. It’s all the non-teaching aspects of the job that make me want to leave. I love working with the kids, not plotting data on a graph that no one will ever look at.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's why I left teaching:
1. Disrespectful kids whose parents have taught them they're always right and everyone else should work around them
2. Everyone having "special needs" like being allergic to perfume, being vegan, gluten free, nut free, non verbal learning disorder, etc. I couldn't deal with it all.
3. Standardized testing preparation. Instead of doing fun lessons, for a large part of the year we were doing test prep

Yes, if the pay was better and I felt kids and parents would respect me and other teachers, I'd love to teach again. I think I was a great and very creative teacher, but it's just draining and not worth it to me anymore.

LOL! At #2

You quit your job partially because some kids were vegan and some kids had disabilities? No. Don't go back into teaching. It wasn't for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the most annoying aspect of being a teacher is this strange culture around paperwork, “professional responsibilities” and all the non student facing elements of the job. There’s always this weird undercurrent of “you’ll be in trouble if...” you get caught without x form, you aren’t taking enough data, your lesson plans aren’t detailed enough, you’re not organizing certain things in a specific and obsessive format, you don’t have your bulletin board rubrics formatted how they’ve directed and updated each week, etc.

I’m an adult, I don’t care if you’re mad at me about a meaningless form? It’s bizarre. It’s all the non-teaching aspects of the job that make me want to leave. I love working with the kids, not plotting data on a graph that no one will ever look at.

Ah yes, I too don't like doing the parts of the job that I am required to do but don't enjoy. I too am a stable person who has thought about quitting my job because I had to do forms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the most annoying aspect of being a teacher is this strange culture around paperwork, “professional responsibilities” and all the non student facing elements of the job. There’s always this weird undercurrent of “you’ll be in trouble if...” you get caught without x form, you aren’t taking enough data, your lesson plans aren’t detailed enough, you’re not organizing certain things in a specific and obsessive format, you don’t have your bulletin board rubrics formatted how they’ve directed and updated each week, etc.

I’m an adult, I don’t care if you’re mad at me about a meaningless form? It’s bizarre. It’s all the non-teaching aspects of the job that make me want to leave. I love working with the kids, not plotting data on a graph that no one will ever look at.

Ah yes, I too don't like doing the parts of the job that I am required to do but don't enjoy. I too am a stable person who has thought about quitting my job because I had to do forms.

Are you expected to work all day and then do all your paperwork at home, unpaid, on your own time? Because we aren’t actually allowed to do any of this at work. They took away all our administrative time this year so we could stay with our kids in the classroom all day, and we’re not even permitted to check our email. I teach special Ed so this amounts to hours each week. I also have the distinct pleasure of creating and differentiating the entire curriculum myself. The cherry on top is that there is no ventilation system and the kids aren’t required to wear masks due to their special needs. You have no idea what my job entails, weird how you think it’s no different than your own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If there was really a teacher shortage, teachers should trade tenure protections for higher pay. No district is going to needlessly fire a good teacher if there's a shortage, and Republicans would probably get behind it, particularly if it included a pay-for-performance element.

That has not worked well for teachers in private schools or charters. A friend taught at a charter in another city. She was warned that the board liked to cycle out even good teachers every three years so no one cost too much.

Most of the school systems with pay for performance don't offer good salaries to begin with. It is typically something that anti-teacher and anti-union areas try to suggest, but it is really just a tactic to lower overall teacher salaries or remove more expensive teachers.

Perhaps, although that wouldn't be my goal. I'd absolutely support an overall increase in sending on teacher salaries. It should just be done sensibly. But part of that does mean that it makes no sense to pay a 60 year old teacher twice as much as a 26 year old teacher for the same job. I'd be perfectly happy paying everyone the current rates for highly experienced teachers, if that's what it would take to attract good teachers.

And to be clear, I do think there's some value in experience and retention. But that value is probably closer to 20% than 100%. And it also makes sense to pay entry-level teachers less because you don't know much about their quality yet. But that effect should be largely gone by year 5.

This x 1000! As a teacher new to MCPS but with a variety of experience in different educational settings not recognized enough by MCPS to have a significant impact on my step level, I have found myself frustrated over the extreme salary disparity. Using myself and several co-workers as an example (we are dedicated, enthusiastic, always spending $ on school supplies, working weekends to individualize instruction, constantly taking pd out of pocket, heavily invested in the Science of Reading, etc.), and thinking about other co-workers making 108k or 125k who are not even doing half of what we are doing is insane. I agree that there should be some compensation for experience, but not double or triple the amount a starting teacher makes. This is especially apparent when contrasted to the private sector (as another PP pointed out) where increased salary = more responsibilities. Not true in the world on education!

[Anonymous]

How do you know those teachers with years in the system weren't just like you young whippersnappers when they started out? You cannot sustain that pace, PP or you will be exhausted, bitter teachers by 10 years in. Take your weekends and breaks for yourself. Stop spending what little you make on school. Invest it in yourself. Pay off debts if you have them or invest it. You will need it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If there was really a teacher shortage, teachers should trade tenure protections for higher pay. No district is going to needlessly fire a good teacher if there's a shortage, and Republicans would probably get behind it, particularly if it included a pay-for-performance element.

That has not worked well for teachers in private schools or charters. A friend taught at a charter in another city. She was warned that the board liked to cycle out even good teachers every three years so no one cost too much.

Most of the school systems with pay for performance don't offer good salaries to begin with. It is typically something that anti-teacher and anti-union areas try to suggest, but it is really just a tactic to lower overall teacher salaries or remove more expensive teachers.

Perhaps, although that wouldn't be my goal. I'd absolutely support an overall increase in sending on teacher salaries. It should just be done sensibly. But part of that does mean that it makes no sense to pay a 60 year old teacher twice as much as a 26 year old teacher for the same job. I'd be perfectly happy paying everyone the current rates for highly experienced teachers, if that's what it would take to attract good teachers.

And to be clear, I do think there's some value in experience and retention. But that value is probably closer to 20% than 100%. And it also makes sense to pay entry-level teachers less because you don't know much about their quality yet. But that effect should be largely gone by year 5.

This x 1000! As a teacher new to MCPS but with a variety of experience in different educational settings not recognized enough by MCPS to have a significant impact on my step level, I have found myself frustrated over the extreme salary disparity. Using myself and several co-workers as an example (we are dedicated, enthusiastic, always spending $ on school supplies, working weekends to individualize instruction, constantly taking pd out of pocket, heavily invested in the Science of Reading, etc.), and thinking about other co-workers making 108k or 125k who are not even doing half of what we are doing is insane. I agree that there should be some compensation for experience, but not double or triple the amount a starting teacher makes. This is especially apparent when contrasted to the private sector (as another PP pointed out) where increased salary = more responsibilities. Not true in the world on education!

You're going to have to work very hard to find a teacher in any local school system making $108k or $125k. I've been in my school system for over 20 years and I'm nowhere near that ballpark, and I am a Masters +30. I have colleagues coming up on their 30 year mark and they aren't even close to $100k. We've all had too many years where there was no step. So stop making yourself crazy about what other people are earning. There isn't that much of a disparity as you think, and it seems like the new teachers are coming better off comparatively to the veteran teachers.

Also take some time to figure that the vets have figured out how to do more in less time because we have a lot more resources already saved up. If you would make friends with veteran teachers instead of trying to make them enemies then I think you'll find that they are happy to help you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If there was really a teacher shortage, teachers should trade tenure protections for higher pay. No district is going to needlessly fire a good teacher if there's a shortage, and Republicans would probably get behind it, particularly if it included a pay-for-performance element.

That has not worked well for teachers in private schools or charters. A friend taught at a charter in another city. She was warned that the board liked to cycle out even good teachers every three years so no one cost too much.

Most of the school systems with pay for performance don't offer good salaries to begin with. It is typically something that anti-teacher and anti-union areas try to suggest, but it is really just a tactic to lower overall teacher salaries or remove more expensive teachers.

Perhaps, although that wouldn't be my goal. I'd absolutely support an overall increase in sending on teacher salaries. It should just be done sensibly. But part of that does mean that it makes no sense to pay a 60 year old teacher twice as much as a 26 year old teacher for the same job. I'd be perfectly happy paying everyone the current rates for highly experienced teachers, if that's what it would take to attract good teachers.

And to be clear, I do think there's some value in experience and retention. But that value is probably closer to 20% than 100%. And it also makes sense to pay entry-level teachers less because you don't know much about their quality yet. But that effect should be largely gone by year 5.

This x 1000! As a teacher new to MCPS but with a variety of experience in different educational settings not recognized enough by MCPS to have a significant impact on my step level, I have found myself frustrated over the extreme salary disparity. Using myself and several co-workers as an example (we are dedicated, enthusiastic, always spending $ on school supplies, working weekends to individualize instruction, constantly taking pd out of pocket, heavily invested in the Science of Reading, etc.), and thinking about other co-workers making 108k or 125k who are not even doing half of what we are doing is insane. I agree that there should be some compensation for experience, but not double or triple the amount a starting teacher makes. This is especially apparent when contrasted to the private sector (as another PP pointed out) where increased salary = more responsibilities. Not true in the world on education!

Save your weekends and your money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I taught for three years. Couldn't hack it. Now I have a desk job and make over $100K.

Now that charter schools are everywhere, teachers are seeing reduced benefits - no more pensions, no more substitutes - plus longer hours.

Teachers need to be paid more and respected more, especially excellent teachers. Teacher programs should be competitive and there should be apprenticeship programs set up in which excellent teachers team teach with new graduates.

If you sign up to teach for 10 years, perhaps your loans should be forgiven and you receive a substantial bonus ($50K?).

I could go on.

The federal government does have a program like this where teachers work in low-income schools for a certain number of years and then have their student loans forgiven. I forget what the program is called at the moment, but I read and article it and what struck me from that article was that out of all the educators who applied to the program and met the qualifications, 97% were denied and given no explanation.

Again, that was explicitly Betsy DeVos's choice. She is gone now. Miguel Cardona is for debt forgiveness, so this program will be revived.

I was a teacher who SHOULD have had the loan forgiveness but did not because of a technicality and this was before DeVos. It was 2006-2012. There are/were lots of fiddly rules with the program (years have to be continuous, you can't switch schools- even low income to low income, etc ). Also, I should have gotten ~17K in loan forgiveness (which is only available to high school math and science teachers or special ed). If you do any other subject or k-8 it's only 5k. This isn't really enough to make it worth it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the most annoying aspect of being a teacher is this strange culture around paperwork, “professional responsibilities” and all the non student facing elements of the job. There’s always this weird undercurrent of “you’ll be in trouble if...” you get caught without x form, you aren’t taking enough data, your lesson plans aren’t detailed enough, you’re not organizing certain things in a specific and obsessive format, you don’t have your bulletin board rubrics formatted how they’ve directed and updated each week, etc.

I’m an adult, I don’t care if you’re mad at me about a meaningless form? It’s bizarre. It’s all the non-teaching aspects of the job that make me want to leave. I love working with the kids, not plotting data on a graph that no one will ever look at.

Ah yes, I too don't like doing the parts of the job that I am required to do but don't enjoy. I too am a stable person who has thought about quitting my job because I had to do forms.

Are you expected to work all day and then do all your paperwork at home, unpaid, on your own time? Because we aren’t actually allowed to do any of this at work. They took away all our administrative time this year so we could stay with our kids in the classroom all day, and we’re not even permitted to check our email. I teach special Ed so this amounts to hours each week. I also have the distinct pleasure of creating and differentiating the entire curriculum myself. The cherry on top is that there is no ventilation system and the kids aren’t required to wear masks due to their special needs. You have no idea what my job entails, weird how you think it’s no different than your own.

+1 Your post is understood by many of us!!

[Anonymous]

Places like mcps have a gotcha culture of bullies that pile on new teachers who they stick with the classes filled with the worst if the worst students. Even if your students are acting violent in class they will not be removed. It's really scary. Then you as a teacher are the in who is blamed for everything even if you are the only one holding things together. Students have no responsibilities to act civil. Admin has no responsibilities to give students and teachers a civil place to learn. Then par personally pop in your room and blame you for violent misbehaved students. They blame your lesson plans they blame you for students sleeping then they send you to a par tribunal where a panel of old spineless principals scold you for trying to work with bad students. Your principal will pressure you to give everyone regardless of high grades. Then they will non renew you. Oh yeah. Then they will fraud the paperwork and tell dllr unployment that you quit. Non one has any professionalism as they stare in the face of fraudulent activities with some bizzare confident that they will never get caught.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I taught for three years. Couldn't hack it. Now I have a desk job and make over $100K.

Now that charter schools are everywhere, teachers are seeing reduced benefits - no more pensions, no more substitutes - plus longer hours.

Teachers need to be paid more and respected more, especially excellent teachers. Teacher programs should be competitive and there should be apprenticeship programs set up in which excellent teachers team teach with new graduates.

If you sign up to teach for 10 years, perhaps your loans should be forgiven and you receive a substantial bonus ($50K?).

I could go on.

The federal government does have a program like this where teachers work in low-income schools for a certain number of years and then have their student loans forgiven. I forget what the program is called at the moment, but I read and article it and what struck me from that article was that out of all the educators who applied to the program and met the qualifications, 97% were denied and given no explanation.

Again, that was explicitly Betsy DeVos's choice. She is gone now. Miguel Cardona is for debt forgiveness, so this program will be revived.

There were a lot of hard to know requirements though. Could only be Fed loans, not private. If you refinanced into a new loan with a lower rate, the loan no longer qualified. It had to be the original untouched loans. It was almost impossible to get loans canceled until recently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Places like mcps have a gotcha culture of bullies that pile on new teachers who they stick with the classes filled with the worst if the worst students. Even if your students are acting violent in class they will not be removed. It's really scary. Then you as a teacher are the in who is blamed for everything even if you are the only one holding things together. Students have no responsibilities to act civil. Admin has no responsibilities to give students and teachers a civil place to learn. Then par personally pop in your room and blame you for violent misbehaved students. They blame your lesson plans they blame you for students sleeping then they send you to a par tribunal where a panel of old spineless principals scold you for trying to work with bad students. Your principal will pressure you to give everyone regardless of high grades. Then they will non renew you. Oh yeah. Then they will fraud the paperwork and tell dllr unployment that you quit. Non one has any professionalism as they stare in the face of fraudulent activities with some bizzare confident that they will never get caught.

She’s BAAAACK!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Places like mcps have a gotcha culture of bullies that pile on new teachers who they stick with the classes filled with the worst if the worst students. Even if your students are acting violent in class they will not be removed. It's really scary. Then you as a teacher are the in who is blamed for everything even if you are the only one holding things together. Students have no responsibilities to act civil. Admin has no responsibilities to give students and teachers a civil place to learn. Then par personally pop in your room and blame you for violent misbehaved students. They blame your lesson plans they blame you for students sleeping then they send you to a par tribunal where a panel of old spineless principals scold you for trying to work with bad students. Your principal will pressure you to give everyone regardless of high grades. Then they will non renew you. Oh yeah. Then they will fraud the paperwork and tell dllr unployment that you quit. Non one has any professionalism as they stare in the face of fraudulent activities with some bizzare confident that they will never get caught.

I believe this. I saw this done to a first year teacher who tried to flag my son’s LD. Crazy bad culture.