Teacher Turmoil: Uncertainty for the Up-and-Coming Classes
This 2022-2023 school year faces a teacher shortage that is said to have “never been seen before.” According to Rebecca Pringle, the President of the National Education Association [NEA], the United States is facing a “five-alarm crisis.”
“This is not new,” Pringle said in an interview with ABC News. “We have been sounding the alarm for almost a decade and a half that we have a crisis in the number of students who are going into the teaching profession and the number of teachers who are leaving it.”
Classrooms are suffering the consequences of teachers leaving their positions.
“The concerns that our educators and parents have raised, which are playing out, [and] played out last year... is that we had to double-up classes,” Pringle commented.
Summary of instructional vacancies. via duvalschools.org
Though Paxon did not get the worst of the teacher shortage, one tenth-grade classroom had to go almost five weeks without a teacher.
“When we are given assignments, we have no instruction other than what’s on the paper because that’s all our sub is told,” said Sunny Hewett, a sophomore in the English class. “The past week, we haven’t had assignments so most of the students have been using it as a study hall or a place to catch up on our work.”
Although it may seem like it would be a welcome break, the lack of an educator is causing mixed feelings among students.
“I have never seen it this bad.”
“I enjoy the free time because I use it to get work done for other classes,” said Jahnaya Whyte, another student from the same class. “While this is enjoyable for us, it is not logical and our time in class should be spent learning.”
This problem has been festering for about a decade and the COVID-19 pandemic certainly did not help.
The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education releases a comprehensive report on the state of teacher preparation each academic year. Between the 2008-09 and the 2018-19 academic years, the number of people completing a teacher-education program declined by almost a third.
“I have never seen it this bad,” Dan Domenech, executive director of the School Superintendents Association, said of the teacher shortage in an interview with The Washington Post. “Right now, it’s number one on the list of issues that are concerning school districts ... necessity is the mother of invention, and hard-pressed districts are going to have to come up with some solutions.”
Though the number of teacher positions cannot be precisely tracked, associations in other states like the Nevada State Education Association estimate 3,000 teaching positions to remain unfilled across 17 districts as of early August, and others like the Illinois Association of Regional School Superintendents estimate that 88 percent of school districts statewide were “having problems with teacher shortages.”
“We are proposing first, a governor’s recruitment program focusing on our heroes. ”
Both state and federal governments are looking to combat this shortage. One way they are trying to promote people to sign up for the teaching profession is through federal programs that aim to make getting an education more accessible.
“Having more options for high-quality, low-cost online teacher preparation programs would also encourage prospective teachers to enter the profession without worrying about heavy college loan debt dragging them down,” Suzanne Capek Tingley said in an article for Beyond the Classroom.
In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis announced in July a plan to recruit military veterans to the classroom.
“We are proposing first, a governor’s recruitment program focusing on our heroes,” DeSantis said while speaking at a New Port Richey high school. “So, in addition to recruiting retired military veterans, we also want to include first responders, law enforcement, EMTs, paramedics, firefighters, who have their bachelor’s degree to become teachers and bring their leadership and wisdom into the classroom.”
In Duval County Public Schools, officials increased starting teacher salaries to attract new teachers to the position. This improvement is aimed at helping to populate any understaffed schools.
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