The shortage is pretty much everywhere, although it tends to concentrate in selected fields (i.e. math, science, special education, ESOL, etc.) Most urban school districts have alternate certification programs set up for interested non-teachers. The uncertified people take classes while they are teaching. The Houston ISD should not be figuring out just now that they are seriously short of teachers. And the teacher who was quoted is perfectly correct that upper administrators are perfectly well qualified to go back into the classroom if needed. They just don't want to.
One thing that scares people from studying education is the nonpaid internship. Unless you have someone who can support you financially during the internship you can't do it.
Yes, that is an issue, but it is starting to be addressed. I worked at a paid job during my internship, which about killed me. I was so stressed that I developed a serious health issue.
Barely any men want to become teachers due to the anti-male atmosphere that schools have created in recent years. That rules out nearly half of the candidates.
Anti-male? Not in the U.S. Men are welcomed in schools, particularly at the elementary level. And in all honesty, if we had more male teachers overall, we'd probably be paid better.
I retired four years ago after almost four decades spent as a male elementary teacher. I really never encountered anti male bias at work.
I did feel some in university post grad classes,though, back in the eighties and nineties. With few exceptions there was mutual respect between me and my female colleagues and female administrators I reported to. Those exceptions were generally due to personality conflicts unrelated to gender.
There were a handful of issues that I dealt with specifically as a male teacher, but it's a challenging job for all teachers.
One upside: There were many school years in which I pretty much had my own faculty restroom!
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/06/2023 02:56PM by bobik43.
I have always appreciated having men on an elementary teaching staff. I think it makes for a happier and more mentally healthy environment.
Happy retirement! You certainly earned it. I'm starting year 28 very soon. I could retire at the end of this school year, but may go beyond it. I like my current job and placement, but overall it's been a long slog.
I taught elementary school for 40 years and retired nine years ago. There was such a shortage last school year I got two job offers. Both would have me doing an alternate certification. This is sure different than when I first started teaching. In the mid seventies there was a glut of teachers coming out of colleges. They were children of the sixties that wanted to make a difference. Scoff if you'd like, but I believe that was truly a reason why there were so many.
As a male teacher I saw that about a third of elementary teachers were men when I started. For most of the last half of my career I was the only male teacher or one of two in my building of about thirty teachers. Most of the administrators were female during that time. The MEN and WOMEN signs on the faculty restrooms were just changed to FACULTY. It was a situation that was sometimes uncomfortable to me.
Low pay, low respect, and high demands have made it difficult to recruit teachers. Especially men. And things only got worse after I left. Pay went up some, but the demands and lack of respect amplified.
> They were children of the > sixties that wanted to make a difference. Scoff if > you'd like, but I believe that was truly a reason > why there were so many.
The glut of elementary teachers continued into the early to mid-90s when I got hired. The shortage was predicted to hit around 2010 with the retirements of the baby boomers, but took somewhat longer than that. Most boomers who hadn't already retired headed for the exits when the pandemic hit.
The younger teachers now have lots of options that the older generations didn't have. They, can teach online, or go into higher ed or corporate training. Or they ditch the education field altogether and do something else.
Andros Vir Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Barely any men want to become teachers due to the > anti-male atmosphere that schools have created in > recent years.
Can you demonstrate that? Can you show that there used to be a lot of male teachers and now there aren't?
Lot's Wife Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Andros Vir Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > Barely any men want to become teachers due to > the > > anti-male atmosphere that schools have created > in > > recent years. > > Can you demonstrate that? Can you show that there > used to be a lot of male teachers and now there > aren't? > > Of course you can't.
How many males do you know involved in kindergarten education? Not many want to become involved in elementary schools either. The figure does increase as the ages of the school children themelves get older, but Andros Vir is correct, there is a strong anti-male streak systematically and ideologically in modern education.
I've only known of two male kindergarten teachers in my entire life. The atmosphere is so toxic that if a man goes into that level of work their motives are immediately suspect. (The only reason one of them does that is that he speaks a tiny indigenous language that practically no one else does so is needed in that kindergarten to teach the kids.) I know someone who's just retired from supply teaching (he has terminal cancer) in high school and told me he would never go into it now. The students regularly threaten teachers, sometimes physically or by telling them that they'll say that they were molested if they try to discipline them. I hear that from many male teachers. I never wanted to go anywhere near school teaching mainly because of my gender. The pay's also crap.
Having worked in ten schools in two school districs, I can say with confidence that what you are staying simply isn't true. Men are very highly welcomed at the elementary level, and can have long, successful carreers as you have seen from responses in this thread.
The only accommodation I ever saw was when a male colleague would send students to me when the kid's pants zippers got stuck. But female teachers are careful as well. When I am working with a student one-on-one in my classroom, I leave the door open as much as possible.
Supply teachers (substitutes) are not normally certified professionals, and are not treated as such. Their experience in a classroom is going to be very different from that of the pros. They are more akin to babysitters than teachers. Whenever teachers plan for subs, they give the students easy review materials with only minimal instruction required at best.
A friend of mine works as a sub in London, and her experience mirrors mine from many years ago. Subs can pick the areas and schools where they wish to work. I quickly crossed the rougher schools off of my list.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2023 09:34AM by summer.
When I was at BYU decades ago, most of my roommates were elementary ed or child development majors. Somehow they had been convinced that was a major that would help prepare them for their Mormon goal of catching a man and getting married at BYU. I remember them complaining there were few or no males in their classes to meet.
Back then, fewer men than women in the field may have been influenced by gender expectations they learned at church. In my large upper division physics class, there were only two girls: me and an Asian foreign student. So, the flip side for what girls were not encouraged to do existed then too. I think in some areas, those gender messages might still be strong. Stereotypes were strong then.
I don't buy that schools are hostile to male teachers. I think there were might be other reasons there are fewer men, like conditioning and the low pay and respect teachers have been receiving lately. In my experience, male teachers are no more likely to be accused of what Keeping It Real claims than male pediatric medical professionals.
Plus, all Pre-K teachers and many or most Kindergarten teachers have aides, who are typically female. If a child is having toileting or clothing issues, the aide handles it. I think most principals would be thrilled to have a male Pre-K or Kindergarten teacher. Males normally have an advantage in the elementary school hiring process.
> I don't buy that schools are hostile to male > teachers. I think there were might be other > reasons there are fewer men, like conditioning and > the low pay and respect teachers have been > receiving lately.
I would go further. tilt suggests there was an increase in men teaching in the 1960s, when young people wanted to make a difference in the world. I think that is correct. But it was temporary. The efflorescence of goodwill and civic-spiritedness was gone by the early 1980s and attitudes reverted to the pre-1960s pattern.
And what was that pattern? Disrespect for men engaged in what most people consciously or subconsciously considered "women's work." A couple of decades ago some post-college friends and I attended another friend's wedding on the Navaho reservation in Arizona. To get there we had to fly into Albuquerque and then drive several hours west and upward to the town where the ceremony took place.
Most of us in the back of that pickup truck knew each other but there was another man in his late 20s who was a stranger. I asked what he did and he told me sheepishly that he was an elementary school teacher. He said he often felt disrespected in that role and that he felt awkward with us more academic types. I laughed and said that everyone in the vehicle had immense respect for people who had chosen his career.
My point is that there has long been a presumption that elementary education is women's work: unmarried younger women and then old maids. That plus the limited compensation meant that few boys and young men ever considered teaching jobs. That's why I think Keeping It Real is off base. Other than perhaps a bump in the halcyon 1960s and 1970s, men have never been a major part of elementary school education in the United States and "woke" politics, a term that all conservatives understand but none can define, did not change that.
To the contrary, the brutal beatdown that teachers have recently suffered at the hands of people like Ron DeSantis is the biggest problem in the educational system today--and it effects all potential teachers, male as well as female. Perhaps men are a bit more sensitive to such things because they are already taking a cut in money and prestige by doing what to a large extent remains implicitly a woman's vocation.
Yes, Lottie, you are correct -- teaching, especially at the elementary level, is considered women's work. Hence the low pay and lack of respect. Men who go into teaching are often encouraged to go into administration ASAP. Admin is a more respectable career path for men in the field, and it is more likely to pay a living wage.
I was twenty-five years into my teaching career (which I entered with a Master's degree and a certification,) before I felt that I was doing more than scratch a living. It really should not take a quarter century for someone with a Master's degree to feel like they are earning a decent wage.
In my neck of the woods, men are rarely elementary/primary school teachers, but are often headmasters/principals of them. So paradoxically I suppose both men and women are hard done by in some way.
I would never take a job working in a school. We have a serious knife problem locally. Drugs too. No guns yet.
I also subbed for a few years after retirement. A lot of my subbing was done in schools I knew and for teachers I also knew and worked with. The main advantage to that was I could teach instead of just review, do busy work, or show videos.
However, I stopped subbing when I found that I made as much (or more) with a lower stress level working as a barista.
I'll let you draw your own conclusions from that last sentence.
Yeah, there's no way that I'm going to sub when I retire. We have retired teachers in my building who work as part-time paid tutors or as test monitors, but I don't think either job pays enough to make it worth my while.
You've changed the topic from what I addressed. AV said that the number of male teachers has fallen since "woke" politics became an issue "in recent years."
I asked for documentation that that happened. I doubted, and doubt, he can prove his contention. What you say about never having had a lot of male teachers in kindergarten confirms my point. If there were never many men teaching at that level, there was no change "in recent years" and therefore he can't blame progressives.
I'm open to changing my mind if presented with data, but AV is not the sort of person who thinks his opinions require evidence. That was my point.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2023 03:12PM by Lot's Wife.
I'm quite sure that beyond the low sallaries, one of the biggest issues in attracting new teachers, especially in red states like Texas, is the opposition of many, especially religious evangelicals, to what is being taught. This is especially true in the areas of science, history, and social studies, though I've noticed complaints about teachers in some less controversial areas (such as math) as well.
This trend has been going on for while and I think will get worse before it gets better. When my children were in high school in the 90s, we saw teachers in two age groups, very young or ready to retire.
There is a general lack of respect for teachers that comes from all quarters -- society, parents, and administrators. This lack of respect can be very discouraging. It doesn't have to be this way, but that's how it is in the current U.S. culture.
As for the effect of politics on teachers and the educational process, I didn't have any understanding of this before I went into the field. And nowadays of course, it's just crazy.
Every government-operated institution faces the issue of politics as "We the people" have rights, they know that all the rights of the politicians, bureaucracies, and the rest of the public servants come from "we the people" (not the other way around). It's why so many public servants throughout history become such eager supporters of dictatorships, fascism, nazism, and other totalitarian approaches to government. These public servants get tired of "we the people" telling them what to do and they want to be able to forget that they chose to be public servants & instead want to be treated like privileged aristocrats and nobles & just screw the lesser people.
I've thought about making a career change to get out of the office and into the classroom. But I don't think I'd want to do it in some government-operated school. Charter and private schools are better positioned to allow teachers/parents to work directly together without the huge zoo of troublemakers using politics to distract from the shared mission that teachers/parents naturally have to ensure that the best interests of the specific children in their classrooms are being met. If the parents aren't satisfied then they can more easily vote with their feet just as many of you on RfM have done some with your children's Sunday School "education".
Personally, I don't think that the "vote with your feet" option is good to be used often. But just knowing that it's there is very healthy for solving problems. In the government-operated schools the situation for many parents often feels like that which a battered wife faces when she feels things are hopeless/stuck and no way out. And that causes plenty of anxiety and contention so unnecessarily as they go to battle like a cornered wild animal. And then there's the "we the people" situation with politics that's still there to a certain extent over everything and meddling into government-operated institutions.
> It's why so many public servants > throughout history become such eager supporters of > dictatorships, fascism, nazism, and other > totalitarian approaches to government.
>> I've thought about making a career change to get out of the office and into the classroom.
Oh, by all means, have at it. You will need a Bachelor's degree, and then a Master's degree, student teaching experience, and about four different exams to get a certification. There are lots of hoops to jump through, but I'm sure you won't mind. The private schools of which you speak don't pay all that well, but that won't be so important to you, now will it? -- because you want to make a difference.
I will be in the kitchen popping the popcorn while you get to it.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/11/2023 10:49PM by summer.
She was called back to work for a few months at the first of the year and then for 3 or 4 months in the spring. She was missing teaching and going back for those months made her realize she was done. But then she'll probably help if they call her. Her daughter and granddaughter both teach in the same school as she did.
My daughter has a degree in history and my sister has tried to get her to go to work where she does, but my daughter refuses. The district has called her quite a few times.
It is IDAHO. They've had a shortage for a while.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/06/2023 12:08PM by cl2.
Some years ago Utah had a program where veterans could teach 1st through 8th grades without certification but based on our military experience and career background.
I did Spec Ed for many years. A few years back I was asked, finally, if I would like to do something different. To my surprise my wish was granted. I was lucky.
According to some report I heard the US is short 300,000 Spec Ed teachers. They really do not teach. Most Spec Ed teachers just do paper work. Fill out reports. Test.
I know two people who went into teaching. Within five years they were not teaching. I suspect they were good at what they did. I think the grind hits teachers sooner than it used to.
I have had college students ask me what they need to do to teach? They want to love students to a better life. I just tell them to run the other way.
My Step Granddaughter is 24 and a spec ed teacher. Because of the shortage, school system is paying for her masters. While that's good, my hope is that she eventually pivots out of spec ed to other teaching jobs or into the commercial world. BTW, I never voice my opinion unless asked and they don't ask.
She could do her Master's in something other than special ed. Normally the degree is required to keep a certification current, and to keep the state happy with the local school system, but as long as it's education-related, you are good to go. I always advise young teachers to get their Master's in something other than their initial certification field -- i.e. TESOL, Administration (a wonderfully versatile certification which can be used for many jobs not necessarily including school principal,) guidance counseling, school librarian, reading specialist, etc. This gives a teacher an "out" if they get tired of their job. I pivoted from elementary to ESOL, and it really injected new life into my career.
My wife taught SPED for 30 years before retiring 4 years ago. She loved teaching the students and would have done it until death. However, the low pay and thankless administration just did her in. When the time came to renew her license she and I agreed that she should just retire. She has worked as an aide in an ELL program a few days per week since retiring just to be able to do what she loves... teach. The money she makes from it is a joke.
Now.. my daughter begins her student teaching later this month. She is going to finish her degree and get her licensure, and then... drumroll... stay home with her child. She has no interest in teaching in the system. She simply started the program, and is finishing for the sake of getting her degree (sunk costs). It has no appeal to her at all. Too bad for the system too. She is as good as her mother at it. She spent her adolescent summers in her mothers summer-school program as an aide working with students (for free... she volunteered).
I am convinced the the "privatization" movement is being very successful. Eventually states and localities will give money to for-profit schools with no accountability. Just like they do with medical insurance for medicare. The system is being modified to give the rich students a great education,at no cost to their wealthy parents, and the poor kids less (if anything at all). Capitalism at its worst.
At least your daughter will have the degree and certification. If she ever needs to use it for any reason, it's there. It's a smart choice for her to finish it.
Re: Privatization -- I don't see any way that private industry can profit off of K-12 education and provide a quality product. Communities will not be willing to spend the kind of money that would take. Of course, they could provide a very inferior or mediocre product.
IMO the most they can do is what they are doing now -- providing books, educational programs, supplementary materials, learning aids, etc. There is money to be made with all of that. But not in providing everyday instruction.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2023 12:55PM by summer.
I don't think it's about profit, it's about getting a better education for their children. If they can parlay some Govt money to their private schools that much better. While John Q Public argues what should be and not be in schools, wealthy parents will make sure their kid stays of the ruckus. Note: not including southern religious schools, they are a category in themselves
To my mind that's a separate issue. Privatization to me means a corporation running a school and trying to make a profit off of it. I don't see that being successful at the K-12 level.
The use of school vouchers (public money that can be used for private or religious schools) is another matter altogether. The trouble is that it is extremely expensive to provide an education for certain categories of students, including the handicapped, learning disabled, emotionally disturbed, etc. Private schools often pick off the best students and leave the rest to the public schools.
The kind of parents who are willing to go school-shopping for their children in and of itself indicates a level of interest and involvement that can otherwise be lacking. I would rather see quality public-funded charters, school choice for middle and high schools, and selective-admission public secondary schools as opposed to school vouchers. And I definitely don't want to see public funds used for religious schools.
Possibly. A huge problem is teacher workload. We teach for most of the day, but also have a huge amount of paperwork, data collection and number crunching, data analysis, grading, lesson planning, emails, phone calls, etc. to do. I've always said that I do more "office work" as a teacher than I did when I was an actual office worker. Most classroom teachers put in 50+ to 60+ hours per week. Some of that is contracted hours, and much of it is off the clock. School systems hate it when we have any free time, and rush to fill the vacuum with additional tasks to complete. So my fear is that the four day week would ultimately be only minimally helpful. The mentality of overwork needs to change. We are burning out our younger teachers.
Summer, I remember being in Hi-Tech and taking a Friday vacation day just to relax. Unfortunately, the work from Friday was waiting for me on Monday. Also, you when you were legitimately sick you still had to get on your email so your work load wasn't heavier after returning.
When I was in the classroom, it would take me 2-3 hours just to prepare lessons and activities for a sick day or personal day. We're punished for taking time off. And sometimes I would take a sick day just to catch up on work. It's crazy.