Why is there a teacher shortage?
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Anonymous
To the two posters above, How are the teachers part of the problem in your eyes? We expect teachers to solve all of the world’s problems. They are going to fall short. What more do you want teachers to do that you think they aren’t doing already? |
Anonymous
| I don’t speak for all high school teachers, but I feel that some staff have given up. They are caring people who are just overwhelmed by the issues in the classroom and the individual problems of the students. In a lot of classrooms it seems like there are kids who care and try, often college and career bound. Then you have kids who just seem to hate learning and do the bare minimum while playing on their phones or at worst disrupting other students for their own enjoyment. There is kind a of a constant pull for the attention of the kids in the middle with the teacher trying their best to push everyone toward success. It’s too hard. I see some teachers more or less abandoning direct instruction and group work. The kids are just on their phones. It’s just independent work in chromebooks instead. |
Anonymous
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Dehumanizing and dangerous working conditions for teachers has become a global problem, even in countries lauded for valuing education. At some point, education itself became simply a product and providing it became more important than the people involved in producing it.
Why teachers in South Korea are scared of their pupils — and their parents https://apple.news/Aa8Nx-bOGSsmyJMVBQC6dng You don’t need Apple News to read it. |
Anonymous
It’s hard because I see that increasing number of students feel like they don’t need even basic literacy and math skills, let alone geography, literature, and chemistry for the lives they will lead as adults. They anticipate working multiple part-time, low skill, low pay retail, fast food, or manual labor jobs. They don’t think reading or writing well could address any financial, medical, or legal issues they might face because the decks are stacked against them. And they don’t think they’ll need to help their future kids with school because their kids will be stuck in the same short, hard lifestyle as well. They only have screens, sex, and drugs to alleviate their suffering. How do you get them to buy in when they see Millennials and older Gen Z struggling despite having played by the rules. The biggest derailer of these kids’ dreams is a 22 y.o. college grad who returns to their community and works the same crappy entry level job they could have had at 18 with a GED. No improvement in their condition or prospects, but now they have $50k in student loans. |
Anonymous
| The students in my low income school just aren't interested in college. They want to be mechanics at their uncle's shop, work at the Amazon warehouse, cut hair, join the police academy, be moms. Many are immigrants and they want to send money back to family in their home countries because that's what their parents do. Even if they did get full scholarships, most cannot imagine 4 more years of school when they could graduate high school and start earning money immediately. They see any job as a steady paycheck which is a big improvement over what their families have back home. |
Anonymous
Wow - that article is shocking. In so many places, we have gone wrong. Just so wrong. |
Anonymous
| That’s awful. Teachers in this country would quit instead and that’s what they are doing. |
Anonymous
Pretty soon we can turn this job over to ChatGPT and the problem will be solved. |
Anonymous
The problems can be solved by listening to teachers and making the changes they need to successfully teach children. |
Anonymous
+1 million Stop trashing teachers and start listening to them. |
Anonymous
They practically have. All this talk about lengthy lesson plans and such. I don’t see this. It’s mostly canned curriculums and “educational” computer games |
Anonymous
Blame the people in school headquarters who buy these apps and online platforms and then require teachers to use them. In my district, they rank schools based on usage of certain apps. Principals go to meetings where they show these rankings and then they come back to school to make sure we use them at least the minimum amount per week. |
Anonymous
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Terrazas said a low level of schedule flexibility is one lifestyle consideration for workers in education, as well as potential licensing barriers, as is the case for some healthcare jobs. Because of this, he said "elementary and secondary schools tend to have a shortage of teachers."
While licensing and education barriers could be behind this shortage prevailing, other changes may need to be made to attract more workers into this sector. A RAND Corporation survey found only 34% of teachers felt their base pay was adequate. Additionally, while 60% of teachers in the survey considering leaving their job said "my salary is too low," 70% of these teachers considering this said "the stress and disappointments of teaching aren't worth it." Teachers also may have to take into account their spending budget and how much they may have to spend out of pocket on lesson plans, supplies for students, books, and other items. "We don't ask other professions to try to do their job without the materials they need," one teacher, who shared with Insider some of the items she has had to buy over the years for her classroom like some books and bins, said. "I feel like a lot of teachers are expected to do their job without materials that they have or that they need." While some older teachers may be deciding it's time to retire, Nela Richardson, chief economist of ADP, told Insider that "younger teachers are not flowing into that profession as much, and they're leaving." https://apple.news/A65Kkq1tbQNqhYmeeVIes_w I will add to this that about 60% of the hours I spend working are not spent in instruction and of that, roughly 1/3 are spent on tasks that are not in my job description. These off-label tasks were assigned to teachers in my district because the system cannot hire the appropriate professionals to handle it. We have not be adequately trained to absorb these duties. Nor are we allotted the necessary time or materials to them. |
Anonymous
Not blaming the teachers, just pointing out that not a lot of individual lesson planning and actual teaching is going on. There is a teaching shortage, but not a teacher shortage |
Anonymous
Not true. “According to the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, research shows that American teachers usually have from three to five hours a week for lesson planning. In many other countries, teachers spend fifteen to twenty-five hours per week on lesson planning.” |