Educational Issues

» Granan1 - Teacher shortage

I return to work tomorrow in NC. I am a semi-retired teacher who now works part-time in an alternative high school. Half of the staff members there are retirees who have come back to work because they want to stay involved, have the expertise to make the program work, and have been respected enough by the school system to be allowed to develop a program where they can use their talents working to reach at-risk students. In over 30 years of teaching, this is the one situation I would return to. We working retirees agree that we can continue to teach as long as the bureaucracy stays out of our hair and lets us do what we know how to do. When the hassle that we've experienced in other school settings begins, we're gone. We don't have to stay. Perhaps that's the way many teachers - retired or not - are feeling. When school buildings are dumps that no business would use as an office, rules and paper work usurp more time than is actually spent teaching students, and the public blames the educational system for everything that's wrong - in addition to the low pay - why should people stay in the education field. My son trained to be a teacher but managed a restaurant the first few years out of college and made more money. Also, he was his own boss and had the respect of the restaurant's owner.

When America wakes up and shows by its actions that this country truly values education and has respect for teachers, perhaps more people will enter teaching and stay in it.

-- posted by Granan1