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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]One of the issues with all of this teacher blaming was that in many areas of the country, teachers were back teaching in person fall of 2020. Yet somehow they are still the target of crazy levels of parental angst.

DH was an experienced teacher who retired a few years earlier than originally intended due to how unpleasant everything outside the actual classroom was. And he was not the type of teacher anyone would have wanted to retire early—students from years past made a habit of visiting him as adults as they enjoyed his class so much.

I agree with others who suggest fomenting ongoing parental ire is part of a larger goal to destabilize public education. Add the book banning campaigns we are seeing in both school and public libraries to that larger goal as well.

If you are still so angry about what happened in the pandemic that you can’t see this, try taking a deep breath and a few steps back to see what is happening across the country, even in places where kids were in school almost the whole time.[/quote]

This. I was teaching in the fall of 2020 and my kids were back in school. I live in New England and I don’t know one person in Boston, Portland or anywhere, actually, whose kids weren’t back in school by fall of 2020. Online learning was a total bust—kids and teachers alike hated it— and that’s why my school moved back to in person as quickly as possible. I realize that some large school districts in California and a couple other places stayed closed but it was nothing like the whole country.

The real sea change was remote work—most people I know who went remote never went back in person. That has changed the entire real estate landscape as people move out of cities and into the type of small town where I live. These days, basically everyone is remote except teachers.

I work in an independent school but we also serve the public school population, so i have seen all sides of this and I am lucky because I work with a lot of smart, dedicated faculty and admin. On the other hand, watching my kids go through the public school system here, what I see is that the veteran teachers are amazing and when they retire, there is no one to replace them. It’s a merry go round of underqualified, overwhelmed employees and they leave because the issues kids are exhibiting are more severe than ever before and there is no administrative support. It’s really bad. If I was having kids five years from now, I would have to move to find a school with adequate teachers.

Therefore, it’s complicated. Parents have valid worries and so do teachers. But if we don’t make teaching an attractive profession, we will never have good education in this country. You get what you pay for. Education programs should be more like law and med school—much more selective. Attract the best and brightest, pay them well, support them. And try to keep teachers for ten years minimum, because institutional knowledge and experience are invaluable.[/quote]

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