(Photo Courtesy of National Education Association) “A bar graph depicting why teachers and other educators leave the profession.”
Sydney Manchester
Connector Contributor
The national teacher strike is spreading across the country in 2022. Teachers are going on strikes: upset about their wages, being overworked and the high levels of stress that seem to come with the profession.
Edweek.org gives alarming numbers of over 35,000 vacant teaching positions across the United States. These numbers are scary and with a scarce amount of teachers, just about everyone is affected. Along with this, special education and high school math teachers, both highly demanding jobs, are two of the most understaffed positions throughout this national problem. The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the reasons why the national teacher shortage is still ongoing. Kira Etienne, a UMass Lowell elementary education student, speaks on this issue, saying, “I haven’t been in any schools where I noticed the shortage, but in the town I live in the public schools have advertisements everywhere trying to recruit everyone–from teachers to janitors.” Unfortunately, this problem continues to grow and is becoming so much an issue that people are starting to recognize it in their everyday lives. It’s especially noted in the quality of their children’s education.
Underqualified teachers have started to fill in spots, which is a massive disadvantage for many students. “My biggest concern right now is we’re not serving students because there aren’t enough high-quality teachers,” says Professor McCallum, who works in the UMass Lowell education program. Students are suffering from not having fully qualified teachers. Aswell, not having a permanent teacher turns into having a long-term sub or teachers that are constantly switching out- which is not as effective. It prevents them from being able to learn the curriculum and build a personal connection with their students. “I was just speaking with my coworker about this. I think the underqualified are serving some sort of a purpose because if we didn’t have those positions filled at all, then we would be in far worse shape, however we all know that we could be working a lot smarter and more efficiently as a society. The underqualified may produce more underqualified and this can be detrimental,” says Etienne.
A major part of teaching is being able to connect with one’s students. They’re able to learn better when they feel more connected to their teacher and are more likely to pay better attention. It also becomes extremely challenging for students when their teacher is not permanent. Teachers are on strike all over the nation due to their low wages and being overworked. These two major reasons are huge problems for current and future teachers. “Teaching is not a nine to five job where you can kind of clock in, clock out… I think wage is a big part of peoples’ perception of educators, I don’t think teachers are paid enough,” said McCallum. Teaching is often an overlooked profession and more likely than not you’ve probably heard the term “teaching is a passion”. This is most definitely a saying that many people go by; it’s not an easy job and not everyone can do it. Unfortunately, this is a problem that has yet to be solved but is continuing to be worked on. Hopefully soon, learning communities across the United States will be able to see a positive change.
