CBS Morning News did a story on Oklahoma's trouble recruiting and retaining teachers and you can find it Here. Oklahoma not only experiences a severe teacher shortage, they cannot retain teachers they recruit. Many of the red states have similar problems recruiting and retaining teachers.
While New York City does not suffer from a teacher shortage like Oklahoma is, except for the Bronx. Like Oklahoma, many teachers in New York City don't make it a career in the New York City schools. Some go to the higher paying and better resourced suburbs. Others leave teaching, and of the recently hired Tier VI teachers, few will make it to their vesting year for a pension and retiree health benefits.
Whether you teach in Oklahoma or New York city, teachers complain about the same things.
- Lack of respect
- large class sizes
- Inadequate pay
- Under resourced schools
- Too much paperwork
- Lack of independence
- Too many useless meetings and time consuming and unnecessary Professional Development.
6 comments:
I spoke with a teacher who taught in China this past summer and she said the students there stand up when the teacher walks into the classroom.
She noted the respect for teachers in China is incredibly hard to believe as the students there admire teachers asking questions with a glaze in their eyes....this especially after working in the nycdoe for so many years where not only do the students disrespect teachers and staff by treating them like shit but we also get it from the doe as well sort of a double wammy especialy for atrs who suffer in a biased system against them.
they forgot to add "STUPID" since Oklahoma is so much like new york I wish shady would send his low achieving and very low IQ child duhhhhhhshawn there!! its only been a few weeks but his presence has upset and brought down the average of all the other 3rd graders. staff and administration are tired of him parking his car in the staff parking lot. and the kiddies get mad when he leaves class for a vape break. we got together as a community school and want to buy him a ticket to Oklahoma. we sure hope he accepts.
There's a great book about Chinese education called Little Soldiers by Lenora Chu. It's about a Chinese-American grappling with a very different system, and she doesn't precisely idealize it. I also work with a whole lot of students from China. While the students may stand up when the teacher enters, while they show extreme respect, there are a whole lot of limitations. I'm not sure the questions they ask, if indeed there are any, reflect curiosity.
Of course I'm not endorsing a lack of respect for teachers either. That's unacceptable. There must be a place between these two extremes somewhere. Hopefully in my classroom.
New York has never had a shortage of certified teachers. What we have is a shortage of people who want to make a career out of teaching. This is understandable, as it's a high stress, low paying job with horrible working conditions. To make matters worse, the DOE makes it clear that they don't want people to make it a career, so they "reward" loyal employees by trying to railroad them out of the system. It is universally known nationwide that the DOE is unequivocally the worst employer in the country - period. Any institution known for its "horror stories" is not a place anyone with an ounce of common sense would would ever want to get close to. Regrettably, the kids suffer the most, as nobody other than the bottom of the barrel would even consider going into teaching nowadays.
12:44: Then why did doe higher 4000 new teachers? These teachers have to come from somewhere. I'm in the ATR with almost 22 years in and I can't get a position or even a lousy interview. When I was a new teacher, however with little to no experience, I got interviews left and right. I was going on an interview almost once a week. Looks like there will be no shortage of teachers in the near future.
True I’m a VI teacher and guess what ten years to be vested seems like forever for my TRS benefits I’m leaving after completing my four years in DOE. NYc seems to be one of the best paying cities despite of the high living cost.
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