Have some damn respect: Why schools can't find enough teachers to fill classrooms

Who wants to be a teacher?

Anyone got a math degree you aren’t using at the moment? I’m serious. The school where I teach now has two unfilled teaching positions and zero prospects.

A school a few blocks from ours is more than a dozen teachers short. So is another high school a few miles away.

Two of my former principals have tried to lure me to their schools; I helped my current principal steal a teacher from another school. Teachers I know on other campuses are teaching extra classes and doing double duty outside the classroom instead of eating lunch or going to the bathroom, trying to make up for staff shortages.

Teacher shortages are no surprise

This has actually been forecast for a long time – like in this report five years ago. For old-timers, like me, all the pandemic adjustments drove some into early retirement, with not nearly enough young teachers to replace us.

The budget cuts necessitated by the 2008 financial collapse betrayed hundreds of young teachers, many of whom left teaching when they got laid off with no imminent hope of being reinstated.

Could there be a worse moment for this than now – with ignorance threatening our very existence (climate change and deadly viruses made worse by the denial of science; political violence that betrays a meaningful understanding of our Constitution)?

Could there be a worse moment for this than now, with most students returning to campus for the first time in a year-and-a-half and so badly needing something resembling sanity and stability?

Of course, the schools hardest hit by all this are those attended by the most vulnerable kids – living in poverty, many in the child welfare system, at risk of dropping out and all that goes with that.

I’m sure it’s nothing personal against those kids that not enough adults want to teach them, but we can hardly blame them if they do take it personally.

It isn’t just demographics and the last decade’s job insecurity that have diminished the pool of public school teachers.

Larry Strauss: Require COVID vaccines for high school students. I want to keep teaching in real life.

Teacher salaries still lag in most places. In my district, we got a pay raise a few years ago that was actually just a long overdue cost-of-living adjustment.

According to the National Education Association, a third of U.S. teachers with one year or less experience have – and need – second jobs over the summer. So do 20% of those with two to four years of experience, compared with 17% of teachers with five to nine years. In some major cities, the cost of housing is prohibitive given teacher salaries, and home ownership, if at all possible, requires agonizing commutes.

In one study, misplaced institutional priorities leave more than 90% of us – myself included – spending our own money to give students what they need. It’s a kind of emotional coercion.

It’s as if those in power, who set standards and control funding, know we will do it because we actually care about the kids – not just their test scores and graduation rates.

Teaching jobs are hard and underpaid

Working conditions are awful for a lot of teachers. Not only because of the emphasis on standardized tests but also an odious hostility toward those of us whose work is the fundamental purpose of the entire system.

Let me emphasize that. Schools do a lot of things. They provide health – including mental health – services. They feed students and sometimes their families.

Still, they are schools, and education is the primary mission or ought to be. Teachers ought not be regarded as cogs in that system. Those in charge must see their role as supporting teachers, valuing teachers and listening to us.

People ask me how I managed to endure for 30 years – in the same school! I tell them I’ve been very fortunate.

I was hired to fill a position that no one, at the time, seemed to want, teaching students who were at risk, some of whom had been kicked out of other schools. There was no external pressure – no standardized test data with which to beat me over the head, no micromanaging of any kind and a lot of appreciation for my efforts.

By the time our school came under the institutional microscope, I had enough seniority and cred to brush off most of the onerous mandates and enough skill at teaching to get results that mostly shielded me from all that political and administrative cynicism.

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Most new teachers are not so fortunate. They are thrown into some of the most challenging classrooms with insufficient support and sometimes chastised for their struggles.

President Joe Biden has proposed $9 billion to address the shortage of teachers, including at schools like mine.

It is pointless to hang our hopes on legislation that may not survive the toxicity and indifference in our national political landscape. But even if Biden’s plan somehow gets congressional approval, it will still be up to states and local districts to fix much of what has made public school teaching so difficult.

The next generation of potential educators has spoken with disinterest, and now, if states and districts actually care about K-12 education, they better act.

Yes, IF. It’s a fair question. Unless we are to believe it is coincidence that we are failing to provide enough teachers to educate the next generation of children?

States and school districts are going to have to increase salaries, perhaps substantially, and especially for new teachers, to have any realistic chance of attracting enough talent to this profession.

They better also improve working conditions if they hope to retain teachers, nearly 20% of whom leave within the first five years.

And stop all the political nonsense of these outrageous and ignorant laws restricting academic freedom – like bans on critical race theory.

And just have some damn respect for teachers who give everything we can for our students – or try to – while fighting to overcome the stupidity and cynicism of the system.

Our students should never have had to depend on the selflessness or sacrifice of suckers like me to receive a good quality education. Now, perhaps, there is hope that sometime soon they won’t.

Larry Strauss (@LarryStrauss) is a high school English teacher and retired basketball coach in South Los Angeles. A member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, he is the author of more than a dozen books. His novel, "Light Man," is due out in November.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: COVID teacher shortage: Have some damn respect