Reply to MCPS faces Teacher shortage next year

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Teaching is also one of those jobs where...you're sitting next to someone who makes 3 figures and doesn't care because they've been around 25 years. Meanwhile, you're doing everything for your students and make 55k. That is why I quit and now make a 3 figure salary myself. This is not sustainable. Teachers need to realize they deserve better. The public doesn't care-hell the public is the problem. People continually whine about teachers while simultaneously beg for teachers. It's pathetic. Teachers know this. They just are bigger than your abuse. Teachers are heroes for reasons you've never thought of. [/quote]

The job is not sustainable if staff have to sacrifice their personal lives to do the job.[/quote]

My kids teachers work at most 180 days a year. Most of them are out all the time for various personal reasons so it's a lot less than 180 days. I don't think they're really sacrificing their personal lives. Meanwhile the rest of us are working 50 weeks a year and 60 hours a week. I wish I had teacher hours. [/quote]

You are welcome to have them. There is a teacher shortage and we could use more people![/quote]

It would be much more productive to acknowledge how common regular teacher absences are than to disparage a parent raising a legitimate concern. Teacher absences are a huge problem for which there is no solution, at least from a parent perspective. It doesn't matter what the reason is (that's a matter between the administration and the teacher), but significant absences harm student learning, which doesn't get acknowledged. If you want teachers to be paid like highly skilled professionals, ensure they are held to the same standards that highly skilled professionals in other industries are. [/quote]

What? Other highly skilled professionals don’t take leave?

I work at a school and have no idea what you mean about frequent teacher absences. Like any other professional we get sick leave and take doctor’s appointments. Teachers virtually never take personal leave or go on vacation. And when we do we can’t just walk away — we have to get up at the crack of dawn despite whatever illness to prepare elaborate sub plans for whoever is going to cover for us (probably not an actual sub because there’s a huge shortage of those too). You just feel teacher absences more strongly than you feel any other professionals’ absences because teachers are so NECESSARY.[/quote]

I agree that teachers are NECESSARY.  Based on my experience with multiple kids, I firmly believe that the amount of time teachers are not in the classroom has increased over the years and is a huge problem. Here is an interesting study on the issue, which notes that teachers in the US:

[quote]. . . are [b]notably large in comparison to other industries and countries[/b]. Though comparatively high absences among teachers have been documented previously, we suspect these rates may not be perceived as worrisome because teachers have good reasons for being absent. After all, the nature of the job entails high levels of contact with kids who get sick frequently, and the large share of women in the profession could imply teachers take more days off due to maternity leave or other household caregiving responsibilities.

Yet, our tabulation of data from the Current Population Survey suggest these reasons may not pass muster . . . Both male and female teacher-absence rates are significantly higher than college-educated workers in other industries, including other public service occupations. (Note that we intentionally excluded summer and winter holidays to avoid overcounting teacher absences.) And nurses’ working conditions certainly expose them to sick people more frequently, yet the female nurse-absence rate is comparable to teachers and male nurses are absent about 20% less than male teachers. The data suggests absences among public school teachers are relatively elevated—and a point of leverage worth policy consideration.

Prior evidence on the topic also corroborates excessive absences among school teachers, and that a notable share of teachers’ absences appears to be discretionary. For instance, teachers are more likely to be absent on Mondays and Fridays, and a large percentage of absences due to illness tend to be next on days adjacent to weekends or holidays, or in short blocks of time that do not require medical certification.
[/quote]

[url]https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2020/01/27/we-should-be-focusing-on-absenteeism-among-teachers-not-just-students/[/url]

This data tracks my experience. [/quote]

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