Why is there a teacher shortage?
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Anonymous
IT DOESN'T SEEM TO HELP THOUGH, DOES IT? If these benefits are so awesome, people should be flocking to fill these positions but they aren't. We've had vacancies for over a year and not one person has even applied to most of them. |
Anonymous
So…teachers should get paid a lot more for working a lot less? |
Anonymous
Let’s be very, very clear about this: Apparently these glorious summers aren’t a huge perk. WE ARE ALL STILL LEAVING. If you think these amazing summers are worth it, then apply to work as a teacher. You clearly know the workload and the pay AREN’T worth it, because I don’t see you lining up for an interview. I don’t see anybody lining up for an interview! I’m so sick of hearing “but you get all this time off.” I work 7 days a week. Yes, 7. I am never caught up. I spend my glorious unpaid summers you seem to crave in classes that I PAY FOR in order to keep my certification. So just stop with the “all the time off” nonsense. Frankly, it’s very insulting. |
Anonymous
No, I don't want my children to be exposed to kids with extreme special needs. My children were friends with and got along with several children with IEPs and 504s and had no problems. But there were two extreme children that I did not want around my children, but I had no choice. The one child threw furniture at my child, hit him in the head with a book, kicked him until he bruised, and choked him because my son had the audacity to check out a book from the media center that this child wanted. My child had to go to the nurse four times over 2 school years for multiple injuries from this child. On multiple occasions, when this child had one of his regular tantrums, the entire classroom had to go and sit in the hallway and miss out on their classes until a SPED teacher could be sent from another location in the school to come and calm the child down. This child did hundreds of dollars of damage to school equipment like when he threw a screen projector on the ground, or when he threw a chair and broke a window. And yet, the school could not remove this child from the classroom where he was a danger to the teacher and other children. We were fortunate that after two years, the child's family moved out of our school zone. The second child stabbed another child with a pencil. Pulled another girl's hair until she bled. Threw another child's lunch on the ground (and the child had allergies so could not eat the school lunch and her mother was called to bring her another lunch). No, these children do NOT belong in the general population. It isn't just the costs, but also the fact that they are endangering the other students and the staff. But the IEPs and 504s do not allow the school administration to remove them from the general population, so they continue to endanger other children and staff. |
Anonymous
Yeah, I think if we funded the amount of special education teachers that we actually need so that intensive behavior support was available for those who needed it AND all the other the students who should be getting support actually got it, then many teachers and parents would be pulling their hair out less. Special education teachers get pulled to deal with a couple of students in crisis all day long, and that leaves the students who should be getting support, per their IEPs, getting help solely from the classroom teachers, who are also running the gen ed classroom. Imagine someone running around plugging a thousand holes as they burst in an overflowing dam, and that's what it looks like trying to get adequate staffing and coverage of students these days. |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
Teachers haters irrationally hate teachers. There is literally nothing that you can explain to them that will help them understand. |
Anonymous
No one hates teachers, but let’s not claim teachers are working 8+ hrs per day 7 days per week and 365 days per year. They don’t. In fact, it’s been discussed to pay teachers more and have them be year round employee and many teachers chimed in stating there isn’t enough work for them to do. No other profession gets as many vacation days as teachers do. Some people want to make a lot of money and seek a job that pays as such, but you’d be lucky to get. Some people would rather make less and have more time off and a schedule more closely aligned to the days off their children have. Short of taking FMLA leave, no other employee could take the same number of (unpaid) days off a teacher has without getting fired. The avg American only gets 11-15 paid vacation days, of which most people don’t even take for various reasons. That is comparable to the paid time off teachers get as well. |
Anonymous
I’m a teacher. I’m only able to post right now because I’m home sick. It took me 3 hours last night to make my sub plans. I have a stack of papers next to me that I’ll use my sick day to get through. Maybe 8 hours of grading today? I’ll spend about 2 hours tomorrow grading today’s sub work. So my 7.5 hours of sick leave actually represents 13 hours of work. That’s teaching. I’m not angry. I’m just telling you what it’s like. And I’m also leaving, so this won’t affect me next year. I don’t know who is going to teach my own kids. My younger daughter has long-term subs covering her Science and English classes. 4 of her teachers quit last year. I don’t blame the teachers or the school. I get it and I know it’s going to get worse. I’d take time over pay any day. Don’t pay me more. Take 15 hours of work off my plate each week and I would stay. |
Anonymous
No one works 365x8x7. But teachers do work far more hours than they are contracted to do. If you sincerely don’t hate teachers then listen to what they are saying. Some of these “perks” aren’t as valuable to them as you think they are. And they aren’t enough to overcome other challenges. Teachers are leaving. You can either try to understand why by listening to them or you can create some alternate narrative. |
Anonymous
Just about every salaried employee also works over the standard 40 hr week. I really don’t see the pay and hours being the main challenges to teachers. There are plenty of people that like that schedule and the flexibility it offers. The problem is no one wants to go into teaching only to be stuck managing poorly behaved kids all day long. With the terrible absentee parenting, plus the huge rise in ADHD and such, it is too much. If teachers could actually teach, and feel they were making a difference vs being babysitters, more would stay. |
Anonymous
Teachers are telling you why we are leaving. For some, it’s poorly behaved students. For many, it’s the workload, and it’s a lot more than 40 hours a week. A LOT MORE. This job doesn’t have the flexibility you think it has. To get an hour off for an 30 minute appointment, I HAVE to take four hours of leave. Many teachers have to find their own subs, and then have to cancel the appointment because there are no subs available. Teachers miss everything at their own children’s schools. If it happens during the school day, teachers miss it. I’ve missed 3 events this year already. For 10 months, we live by a bell and have no flexibility. We have flexibility for 8 weeks during our unpaid summer, but we are often taking college courses (that we pay for) to maintain our certification. We also prep for the next year. |
Anonymous
Teachers don’t get paid time off. They work 180 days and get paid got those 180 days. |
Anonymous
My kids have 6 teachers/6 classes daily. There seems to be a least one sub per week in a class, sometimes more. Does this get deducted from their 180 days of paid working days? |
Anonymous
Most teachers get 8-10 days of leave a year. So those teachers lost a day of leave, yes. I think the PP is trying to point out that the days teachers don’t work (summer break, spring break, etc) aren’t actually leave. Teachers contracts are for 180-190 days a year. Breaks aren’t “leave”. They just aren’t work days. Teachers aren’t paid for them. (And they often are work days. When I taught public school, my family was very mad at me for grading on thanksgiving. I had no choice. It had to get done.) |