Florida will be short over 9,000 teachers this fall.

I wonder why? We all know the reason.

War on teachers. Desantis. Fake fear mongering in the name of culture wars. This us a direct result. So many things are going to blow up on him. He has the charisma of a turnip. November is going to be much closer than people think.

 

How about them what they're worth. Florida ranks 45th in the US for average teacher salaries, $48,314 a year.

 

Once I retire (early) I wouldn’t mind teaching. I feel like I can turn minds into liberal mush fairly easily.

 

As much as I dislike DeSantis, this has been a long time coming. Really started with Jeb Bush with the goal of dismantling public education. The problem that people won’t address is that if they push kids to charters/private there still won’t be enough teachers.

I remember the first time I renewed my certificate in 80s I got a thank you letter from the state. What do I get from the state now? A bunch of aggravation and disrespect.

 

Gonna be interesting since the state basically made a big deal about F2F instruction the gold standard and distance learning a crime against children during COVID. Though they are unprincipled, so I'm guessing solving their problem by making teachers handle more students will be what they settle on!

 

Who can blame them? It's an extremely stressful job that requires tons of off the clock work. The pay sucks for the investment required to do the job.

 

It happens every year, everywhere, but is much, much worse this year. Its a truly thankless profession under constant attack in the best of times, veritable siege now. Good chance you will be accused, videotaped, doxxed, threatened and all manner of harassed by "concerned parents", all while being used as a foil by those in power, for very little pay

 

You don't think Don't say gay was the proverbial straw that broke many teacher's backs?

 

Possibly for some but my point is that this didn’t start with signing this bill into law.

The state won’t even issue any sort of parameters with this nonsense. No direction

 

It’s funny how republicans think the principles of capitalism don’t apply to keeping and retaining educators. Raise their pay until the supply meets the demand…

I heard USF, which was once the 5th largest college of education In the US, is doing away with it due to lack of demand. They will apparently still offer eduction degrees but you have to major in the subject you want to teach… something like that,…

 

Yeah, I remember hearing they couldn’t ban pictures of spouses of legally married same sex couples unless they did the same for heterosexual couples… but now I’m hearing some districts are banning same sex couples only, because there is no guidance, and they don’t want to get sued by homophobes. Now they probably get sued for discrimination… it’s like Florida is being led by an idiot who can’t think things through.

 

Yep. It's a lot of cognitive dissonance for many to gradually appreciate that arguments suggesting that a certain proposed measure will destroy the system over time will not serve to deter or even bother the proponents - that's their goal!

 

I'm working on an article regarding work-life balance, teacher burnout, and attrition. The article is specific to my discipline, but speaks to some of the macro issues as well. Many will point to this issue or that issue, but teacher attrition can be attributed to several factors, including:

• ignorance and lack of respect from the public
• government/legislative issues extinguishing "free" speech (haven't researched this factor, but look at FL)
• low pay
• pressure from administrators (ex. to achieve test scores)
• poverty of the children and lack of resources from home and in-school
• ignorance/depraved nature of too many parents
• Covid (too much to unpack here, but imagine working in a box with 28 five year olds and trying to maintain appropriate health measures; it's a virus's petri dish dream)
• school shootings (haven't researched this from a perceptual standpoint either, but as a former school teacher, it MUST weight heavily in the minds of educators)
• a stack of bureaucratic work required to do the job well, which only increases and seemingly never decreases. See post #7, which rings true for so many teachers.
• so many distractions from what should be time devoted to continuing professional development

Imagine a job where you don't get to choose when your bathroom break occurs; where you are strictly confined to campus w/o the ability to depart for lunch; where your lunch "break" is 30min, including the time necessary to situate the students for their own. Lunch for teachers is often about 15min. These are only some of the practical issues and I understand that they are not exclusive to the teaching profession. They often get overlooked, though.

I'm only scratching the surface. The fixes are never simple or easy. Substantial sacrifice would need to be made, esp. from a budgetary standpoint, in order to rectify some of the inequities associated with the teaching profession. For example, teachers should have paid internships. I scoffed at this idea upon hearing it for the first time, but the more I thought about it, the more I couldn't resist the idea. The fact is, though, that teachers not only have to pay (increasingly high) tuition for their internship, they have to pay for licensing exams (ballpark $300) and for an educator performance assessment. It's called the edTPA and comes at an additional expense of $300. They do essentially all the work of a teacher and pay to do it.

By the time they enter the profession, they've already been nickeled and dimed, marginalized, told their in the "those who can't, teach" profession, etc. It's high time we get our heads out of our collective a$$es and understand that if we are going to have a strong society, we need a strong education system. To accomplish that, we have to do a MUCH better job of incentivizing the teaching profession and not just the education administration aspect of it.

 

Great stuff. Would love to see the study when done

 

I know this wasn't directed at me, but my $.02: For some, yes, but not for most. There's much more to it and teachers have been dealing with those kinds of socio-political pressures for a long time.

 

GF teaches 5th grade. Very good teacher, won Teacher of the Year for both schools she has been at (just missed finalist for the District level).
Anyway, she is very concerned about a new book "ban" in the state. Even books that aren't anywhere near gay or trans subject matter are on the chopping block. To the point where she is hesitant to even have a classroom library that kids can pick out books to read.

 

You know more than I but it makes sense to me that it was not so much that particular bill that made things worse now, but the nationwide coordinated movement of "empowering parents", or whatever they call it, encouraged in this state, to monitor and attack teachers as "groomers", etc.

And anyone who follows the issue knows that these "concerned parents" are usually vicious political activists more than parents with kids in the class.

That would seem to me to be a significant escalation to the mass of misery your average teacher faces on a daily basis.

 

The article is based on the research of one of my graduate students, who found that teachers in our discipline are increasingly burning out. More than 50% of those polled felt that the work-life aspect was not sustainable and entertained thoughts of leaving the profession. We are entering crisis mode wrt teacher retention.

 

Congrats to your GF! ToY awards are no joke and the fact that she earned it at both schools is fantastic.