STLPR wants to understand what’s driving the teacher shortage
Low pay. People smart enough to be teachers can easily earn more in other jobs.
Stresses caused by the chaos of COVID and now the attack of conservative school board members. Book bans. Transgender. Critical race theory.
We should appreciate what teachers do and let them know we care. Same as police officers. If you want to keep the ones we have and attract more, we need to back them as best we can.
Never mind that transactional analysis I’m OK, You’re OK teaches that teachers and policemen are two groups in addition to parents permitted to criticize adults. And we hate it!!
We do hear reports of teachers hired from English speaking countries like the Philippines and India to teach at schools with openings. There are probably many more countries that qualify for they are most likely to attract teachers from low wage countries. Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand come to mind as possibles but probably require higher compensation.
Don’t be too sure of the depth of skill with English of many people from those countries. When I was in college, plowing through Calculus, I would often pass a classroom where the prof clearly was not a USian. I could barely make out what he was saying.
My dad was a teacher. There’s also a long line of teachers on my mom’s side of the family. I was a teacher and lasted 2 years.
My “I believe the children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way” attitude that lured me into the profession, was quickly challenged in college courses with other prospective teachers. Let’s just say the profession doesn’t always attract the cream of the crop. Don’t get me wrong, there are excellent, passionate teachers who are the smartest among us. Unfortunately, there are also people who lack a fundamental understanding of the topics they’re tasked with teaching to kids. Our children should be taught by the best of the best. Low pay, miserable working conditions, and high stress do not attract the best of the best.
While I enjoyed teaching kids, having to deal with parents and administrators pushed me out of the profession. I was also depressed by the other teachers on my team who felt trapped in the professional after working 10, 15, 20 years.
After leaving the profession, my first job paid 50% more…and I wasn’t initially qualified for the role.
You would think schools hiring them would have agents who could conduct in person interviews. Language skills in those are hard to fake. (Easier to hire an impersonator to do the interview in your place.)
Fakers probably don’t last long. And some do like the idea of polishing their English, earning better money, and being able to travel in the USA.
The thing that really strikes me about that graph is not just the recent dip, but the preceding flatline so the relatively small recent dip puts them back to 1990 levels.
I think we call on schools to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. And I think they do that very well for the most part. Yes, we ask schools to Americanize immigrants. And those without knowledge of English are a challenge until they learn English. We call on educators to teach the poor, the disabled, and dozens of minorities. Some schools definitely need more resources. Dedicated teachers help. But they cannot do it alone.
True dat. Do you know how much time teachers spend in “clasroom management”? That means dealing with unruly bastards whose parents are raising hellions.
Not long ago, one of the members of this board posted the current rates for attending LSU. I replied with the current tuition and fee rates for the second tier Michigan state university I attended, and for U of M. I’m pretty sure that, if you can play football, well, you can get a free ride at either Michigan university. But, if you are there to learn, you will pay triple what LSU charges.
I have commented before, that I looked through the Farmington HS course catalog, a few years ago. Nearly every academic class had a fee, anywhere from $10/semester, to a few hundred for the debate class. No vocational ed classes offered. But being on the football team is free.
A coworker of mine sent her spawn to Churchill HS, in Livonia. Churchill charges a $100/year fee to play football, but if you want your spawn to learn to drive, you are on your own. Livonia Public does not offer driver’s ed, even as an elective.
Based on these tidbits, where do academics, or practical skills, stand, vs feeding players into college football?
