Teacher shortage looms
 

It appears that the USA is facing a teacher shortage in the near future.

I was not a teacher but for my classmates that went into teaching, it always seemed like a nice career. You weren’t going to get rich teaching but very few of us got rich - most of us ended up middle class.

Work hard the first few years to get the lectures down and then you have to just update them. Most of them enjoyed life - not a lot of pressure and summers off. They seemed happy and they felt like they were making the world better.

Education was once the No. 1 major for college students. Now it's an afterthought. - CBS News

It doesn’t loom…..it’s here now.
Plus recent nonsense laws make the job more difficult, and long time teachers are leaving.

. I urge the younger members in my family to avoid becoming a teacher. Too hazardous! Guns brought to school, organized fights, drugs...
We live in a different world!

My daughter-in-law taught first and second grade in small Idaho towns for about five years. She found the children unruly and their parents uncooperative. She burned out after a few short years. I can't imagine what it would be like to teach in an urban school. One cousin's husband told me he was going to teach in a Baltimore City low income area school after he retired from the government. He drove me by it one day, looked like a prison building in a war zone. I didn't think he could handle it but said nothing. I don't know how it all went down but that never happened. He ended up teaching in an exclusive private school. At age 81 he still volunteers there a couple days a week.

It has been getting worse for many years. In the late 1970s a classmate friend from high school visited me in our home town. He had a much older brother who taught math at our junior high. His brother and the shop teacher retired the first day they could and when asked why said the kids had changed. They were middle class - upper middle class kids for the most part, too.

I taught US History for 34 years. I loved my students and the community in which I was employed. At my age I would love to teach two or three classes during a semester. I think I could still relate in spite of the negative attitudes that are expressed by many. Kids are great and have great opportunities ahead of them. Unforunately schools do not hire on a part time basis.

Nothing wrong with the kids.
It's the parents who need educating.
Different interpretation to the words civility and respect these days.

According to surveys by the Florida Education Association(FEA), the number of teacher vacancies have increased by 104 percent since August 2019 in Florida and during the 2021-2022 school year, Florida had the most vacancies with 3,911 positions unfulfilled of any other state.

“ According to the Florida Education Association, there were 5,294 teacher vacancies in January 2023. May 31, 2023”

In meantime very little is being done by our legislators to try making teaching better for the teachers and a few hard-core parents control the narrative as to what they believe children should be taught. These days children are being taught how to pass standardized tests.

It's the kids and the education systems as a whole. Federal funding spent by states on "private school" vouchers means less funding in areas where parents can't afford to send their kids to private schools. I'm talking about transportation. Poor folks who live in cities, generally don't have money for transportation for their kids to go to school every day. Poor folks who live in super-rural areas, like the mountains, don't have money for transportation to get their kids to some private or charter school, the closest of which is a 2-hour walk from home.

Public schools are underfunded in both urban and rural areas, and vouchers don't help these kids AT ALL. So you end up with fewer teachers, who will get paid less, have to put up with more red tape, higher risk of actual death, just to do what they love doing - teach kids. There's no incentive for teachers to teach at rural and urban public schools anymore.

Once upon a time the unions were strong enough to ensure that the towns secured a healthy pension and health benefits package for tenured teachers upon retirement. My mom is the recipient of one of those. She taught full-time kindergarten-3rd grade for 35 years. Anyone who thinks she got all summer off, all vacations off, half-days for parent-teacher conferences, etc - has obviously never been a public school teacher. I know what she did, because I was her kid who she took with her to college for her 6th year degree, her Masters degree, her yearly mandatory summer seminar classes (at her own expense), and washed the dishes while she graded papers after suppertime every weeknight.

I'm the kid who spent a week before the end of summer break, and two days before the end of winter break, with mom in the classroom helping her decorate for the next semester and making sure all the supply cabinets were replenished.

Back then, the schools gave her a classroom budget to work with. She'd spend the money and be reimbursed a month later after submitting the receipts and paperwork.

Now, public schools don't have that option. You want your classroom pretty, then make it pretty. Just leave the school budget out of it. Many public schools in underfunded areas have been like this for decades, and it's getting worse and worse every year.

Yes, Florida has one of the highest vacancies of any other state. They’ve been leaving in droves……. Florida's teachers are leaving in droves - Orlando Sentinel

Once upon a time teachers unions #1 priority was the kids they taught. These days too many unions care mostly about themselves especially in NYC which cannot get rid of teachers who have no business being near children. They have a building full of teachers on their payroll who sit and read books all day while getting paid their salary.

Perhaps if NY held their teachers to a certain standard they could get rid of useless ones and pay good teachers a better salary.

When I was in high school in 1959 I remember teachers in our school becoming unionized. I had a rather dull history teacher who every class session simply stood and reread out of our history book what the class had been assigned rather than enjoin the class in any discussion about our assignment. One day he announced the teachers were now unionized. Apparently he had been a major driving force. He was not even a mediocre teacher... No other teacher commented on unionizing but he was really juiced about it.

Vouchers Now
 

To those speaking out against vouchers, how many generations of children are they willing to write off. This hurts especially poc and other under represented people, whose parents may not be able to afford a home in a good zip code with a good school. For over fifty years it was "we need the money to stay in the failing schools budget to make it better". Would you sacrifice your childs education on a promise of a future improvement. An improvement that has not been realized many generations later. No more condemning children to failing schools because of the neighborhood their folks can afford.

I do not understand the leeway in "What should be taught". in history, teach history. Algebra, Algebra. Can you help me understand what you mean with parents controlling what should be taught? Thanks