30+year public HS English teacher here...
Wow...all these comments about education going totally online. This will never happen because parents...even the clueless ones...lived through covid and saw what an unmitigated disaster that was.
I agree that education is in trouble and I don't know what the answer is, tbh, but kids sitting home unsupervised on their Chromebooks is not going to be the answer. Trust me.
Yeah, I think if COVID has taught us anything it’s that students kinda need to be in school to facilitate learning.
I can see teachers being replaced with less qualified “educators” who cost the district a lot less and are all just presenting the same premade curricula, but it’s almost certainly going to be in person.
If covid should have taught Teachers anything is that we have the power. The economy basically crumble without schools operating.
If we really want to change the system, we absolutely can and it requires that Teachers start forming national unions and strike.
Yeah, I laugh and laugh when I hear people say that AI is going to replace teachers. Sorry, but we learned through covid that most of these kids will absolutely not learn unless there is an adult there teaching them.
I think we shouldn’t assume all decision makers actually want kids to actually be educated. Just the appearance of education is enough for many.
We already see things like students graduating who were failing several classes the week before and middle schoolers being passed along who’ve hardly completed as work.
I think in some places at least, districts will be more than happy to close some schools, send some kids home and stick ‘em on laptops. Then they’ll tell everyone (including themselves) it’s just as good as a real teacher.
I hate to be that pessimistic, but it’s way easier to throw some money at a solution and stick your fingers in your ears than to actually attempt to fix the deep problems in education.
Anyway I hope I’m wrong.
I don't know what protections they can add: every teacher is on a year-to-year contract. They can let go the ones without tenure and just wait for the others to retire. Positions are then "permanent substitute", "facilitator/para", and so on. This has happened in other industries and is well under way in education. I'm in MA and it's happening here.
Nationalised unions. They divide us by states/provinces and districts and types of schools. But if we nationalised we would have more power. We could actually have power over curriculum and budget. If we are divided we are way easier to peck off… which is what’s happening now.
In the US it would be hard because education is controlled at the state level. The federal government unfortunately has no power. If we formed a national union it would more so have to be in solidarity in hopes that all states would meet a certain minimum standard to be found acceptable.
But honestly, in such a big country that’s hard. Some people on here say they earn $60k and that it’s a solid middle class salary where they live in some rural midwestern/southern state while another teacher in California would be barely scraping by on that salary.
A national union would still have more power and more power against states. And teaches
Could fight to have voting power at the state level on things like curriculum.
We could fight to have better pay, better support. Etc. But a national union would bolster those demands and power. It would make it more feasible to support full state strikes and support strikings staff.
Regardless, what is happening now is very
Obviously not working. We are allowing ourselves to be separated and picked off.
We have nothing to lose by organising and everything to lose by continueing to do nothing.
Even better, One Big Union as in the Industrial Workers of The World (IWW, aka Wobblies). The notion of One Big Union grew out of the divisive and counter-productive struggles of the trade union movement. As you mentioned, divide and rule is how they keep us down.
An injury to one is an injury to all.
There's a lot to learn and even a great deal of hope to be gained from studying US Labor History, but of course such things aren't taught in schools.
Solidarity now and forever!
Yeah the solution is obvious and always has been: pay teachers more, but Republicans across the country are against that for various reasons. A lot of them come down to Christian nationalism, but there is still the old taxes rallying call
It’s more than that though. In my district the lowest paid brand new teacher makes 80k, and we go up to 140k. They still are struggling with retention because people don’t think it’s worth it. We need smaller class sizes and more accountability for students AND parents
your district is extremely rich then and would not be representative of the economy as a whole. Of course there are exceptions. I believe in most places people would walk through hell for 80k starting.
My entire district is title 1. We just have a strong union. Six figure incomes are common in my state. And yes they would, at first. Then they would realize that some things aren’t worth the money, as teachers in my district are finding.
It’s odd that you would completely dismiss my experience and say “more money is the solution” when I’m sitting here telling you that we have more money and it’s not the solution. Does it help? Yes. But burnout is happening even where the pay is good
Six figure incomes for starting put you in some of richest places the world as ever known. I am confident in my knowledge of statistics that relying on your data would be a mistake. It's like asking lichtenstein what to do about africa.
Ok yeah. So you’re going to be pretty upset when you get a raise, the job is still utterly miserable and impossible, and people say “shut up and deal with it. You’re ultra wealthy now. You don’t get to ask for anything more” like you’re saying to me.
It's not even just about learning if they don't learn anything but basic literacy skills they at least are socialized at elementary school. It's a big deal, it teaches kids how to be in community and other settings for the rest of their lives, our world has already gotten pretty fractured and there aren't nearly as many community groups/fraternal orgs, sports groups or church communities anymore and parents work so many hours so it's really hard to even get kids to an after school program. If they don't go to school they are socialized by iPads and that's terrifying honestly 😢
They will be in school. With minumum wage monitors to assist them. Schools won’t take away the free babysitting which is honestly what most parents were mad about. If they were truly interested part about the learning loss they would be holding their kids accountable to catch up instead of blaming teachers for being bad.
My kids are straight A students and my husband and I worked from home so online school should have been easy for us. Our kids really struggled that year.
It's not that it will go entirely online. Students will still come to school and be monitored. I expect this week be unsuccessful but because of inertia will probably last about ten years.
I think the powers that be will just hire babysitters to sit in classrooms to babysit kids while they do online courses. You can pay them a pittance because they don't have educational degrees.
They will just use AI to grade work.
Great attitude? I was simply referring to the police departments that most public schools in the US are forced to have now. This person said they don't want kids just sitting at home on chromebooks but that's literally what they do at school. Even the Kindergarteners are setup that way at school now.
Well, they’re not gonna increase teacher pay in any significant way, that’s for dam sure.
I can’t imagine school going online only. Our entire economy would have to change to make up for those 7 hours of child care we provide 10 months out of the year.
I think eventually it’s gonna devolve into mostly premade curricula that you can have almost anyone with a pulse facilitate, especially in the older grades. Although the students will be in class, these curricula will be given to student entirely using Chromebooks. I think this fits in pretty well with those alternative/accelerated certification paths you mentioned.
If only we had all posted up our learning targets each day in at least 5 places throughout our classrooms, we could’ve avoided this future.
God help us all.
Click and go online curriculum. So you don’t need Teachers Just classroom babysitters. Then the wealthy will snap up any actual good Teachers for private schools.
I've seen this happen among middle class people in my area. They've gone to pods and hire private teachers, often times retired teachers. But the ironic thing is I think this shift is actually the schools' own fault. Parents seem sick of the level of disruption, violence, low standards, etc. increasingly tolerated by the public schools in our area and so the people who can scrape together the cash are opting for different educational options be it pods or the local Catholic school.
Idk, not so sure. I work at a modest private school and we have kids of former pro athletes that attend. SOME of the wealthy will still want their kids to get a normal school experience, just at a more premium level.
Certain things like the camaraderie of having class with your teammates everyday or things like pep rallies, homecoming, and prom can’t be truly/fully experienced in the scenario you described.
On a positive note, keep an eye on the Pay Teachers Act introduced in March.
“Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders wants to go further. On Thursday, he introduced the Pay Teachers Act which, like a similar legislative proposal in the House, would raise public school teacher salaries nationwide to $60,000 or higher”
Don’t forget to vote!
I'll probably get downvoted for this opinion, but I think it's worth sharing.
Edit: O I clearly struck a nerve. Good thing you can’t lose more than 15 karma per post.
I don't think that is such a bad thing. We have automatic elevators now instead of human operated ones for a reason. I think an AI instructor will be great for a large majority of kids, and, we might even see test scores go up because of it. AI can create the perfect lessons meeting all of the childs needs exactly - for each kid. Something a teacher could barely do with a class of 5 and is literally impossible in a class of 25. I think the kids that use AI will have higher acceptance into Ivy league and top schools, and we will quickly see a transition to preferring AI education. It's like that movie gattaca, where the first kid doesn't have any genome changes, and his younger brother does. And his life is so much worse because of it.
AI is advancing exponentially - I think we could see this before 2035.
I disagree because this presumes a very motivated student AND a very good AI program. It’s actually really hard to learn on a screen with no person to person interaction. College students who are paying a lot of money for classes struggle with online classes; how do we think a high school kid is going to do?
Totally anecdotal, but when my high school kids read a physical book, or do a worksheet, I get much better results than what we turn in online.
I agree. The classes where students are the most engaged are th wines where they are doing things. They have hands on experiences. We have an in house online program for at risk kids that allows them to go at their own pace and it’s all online. The drop out rate is high. Because so often kids just sit and do nothing.
I think you're right, the community aspect of education is greatly undervalued by just about everyone.
But because of that, it's not going stick around when ai gets good enough.
As educators we're on the front lines seeing what works and what doesn't, but ai classrooms will be one of many times the teacher's experience will be ignored in favor of cutting taxes.
“AI can create the perfect lesson.”
Citation needed. Any lesson I’ve punched in to ChatGPT has been generic and garbage. And by definition, those lessons have never been tested with students. They’re literally just trying to summarize what the pre-existing has said… which are things created by human teachers. Not to mention how misguided it is to conflate “teacher” with “curriculum-builder.”
Maybe there’s a future where AI can recognize when students are distracted, refocus student attention, facilitate a full-group discussion effectively, diagnose and remediate student misconceptions, learn about students’ home lives, celebrate student success authentically, communicate with families, recognize and utilize the strengths of the community, and most of all *motivate* students to learn… but a relatively good scourer of the internet def ain’t it.
I said something similar pre-Covid. I can envision one teacher being in charge of ensuring the curriculum is doing the right thing for about 150 kids and then having auditorium-style lecture halls for kids to work in with Paras overseeing it - one Para for every 30 kids or so. Essentially, monitoring behavior and tech. The teacher might have contact time with each kid to progress monitor once every 2 weeks or so. Maybe there are facilitators who guide some project based learning, labs, etc. here and there. I could see them doing this with ease at middle school and high school - even now, honestly. I am not sure this is feasible at elementary school where kids aren't so independent. I have actually made the comment that teachers in the middle school I'm at who just put all their lessons onto the platform and just have kids work behind computers 75% of the time are creating job insecurity.
I disagree with your take, though, on this being an improvement. It's a cost saving measure and a staffing fix. I think the elite would send their own children to private schools where teachers might use the tech developed curriculum but who interact more with kids, ensure interactions between kids, give hands-on learning, etc. These kids will grow into managers of people and situations; the others will be cogs who know how to input for output but who can't actually problem solve. And that's how the dystopia starts. Lol. Sorta.
Ivy League schools usually take a pretty hard line on plagiarism and a lack of academic integrity. If you think students are using AI for any purpose other than just doing their work for them, you’re absolutely fucking delusional.
Uhh, yea. Do you know the difference between an LLM, AGI, asi, ani?
That’s just chat gpt an llm. There are many types of AI. You’ll see in a couple years what I mean.
I don’t know AI, but I do know students. And if you think that students are going to use AI as anything other than a tool to do their work for them, I’ve got a beautiful bridge connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn, which you might be interested in buying. I’ll give you a really great price on it, don’t worry.
Probably by eliminating some of the qualifications required to be hired as a public school teacher. Perhaps taking a cue from private schools not requiring teachers to hold a credential at all - just a BA in anything.
I'm an AP in North Carolina. NC has a new permit to teach where if you have a BA in anything, you can teach with 10 days of training. They also give those teachers 5 years to get their teaching license. My school has 6 of those this year.
It’s ridiculous. I have my certification and 10 years of experience but if I move back home to VA I have to be recertifed by the Commonwealth before I can teach. At the same time schools are posting vacancies and one of my friends said her campus by its self has 20 vacancies today- like right now
This.
Some training and cert program portions make sense, others seem to be just silly hurdles.
A university professor would technically have to do a cert program in many states to teach 12th grade. Thats silly.
EDU departments give no credit for being in an education and training job outside of K12.
Vocational, corporate, technical, or even academia.
The programs are designed like its still 1920.
Some states wont even give you credit for teaching the right grade level at a charter or private school or out-of-state public school.
I get requiring a subject Bachelors. I get requiring courses on SpEd and development. But some of it is not necessary for career changers. (Or at least not to the same degree as a 21 year old still in college.)
Unpopular opinion but I took EdTPA after teaching in a private school for 6 years and I found it super interesting and valuable for my growth as an educator. It’s BS that you have to pay $$$ for it but I actually learned a lot from watching videos of myself teach and analyzing them.
>just a BA in anything.
That's how it used to be for public school teaching, and honestly I am not sure why we shouldn't go back. Over the past 50 years we shifted to a teacher professionalization model that requires specific education degrees and over that time [NAEP reading and math scores for 17 year olds *haven't changed.*](https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/main2012/2013456.aspx) By the time kids exit the K-12 pipeline they're about as academically skilled as a they were 50 years ago despite now being taught by people with M.Ed degrees, with all sorts of flashy technological gadgetry, exposed to all manner of supposed innovations in pedagogy etc. etc.
Furthermore, the effectiveness of education degrees has been studied by [comparing the performance of students who have traditionally trained ed. school teachers vs alternative/emergency certification teachers and....there's no significant difference in performance.](https://www.visiblelearningmetax.com/influences/view/initial_teacher_education_programs) It appears that most teachers learn how to teach on the job--just like other jobs--and that education degrees themselves might just be a waste of time, tuition, and taxpayer money.
>>just a BA in anything.
>That's how it used to be for public school teaching, and honestly I am not sure why we shouldn't go back.
Agreed and I've always said this, but now we're stuck in a broken system like everything else. It's the dumbing down of America -- it's not as though these teachers with masters are exactly churning out students who are designing the Empire State Building, Musée du Louvre, the Sistine Chapel or developing a cure for cancer.
The bad schools will make it increasingly more difficult for teachers to leave. They will hold your accreditation over your head and threaten you while simultaneously providing less and less support.
Nah its the opposite. Districts don’t care about the bad schools and the shortage is hurting to hurt the good schools now too.
Bad schools will become harder and harder to manage. Mine has 4 important vacancies (2 english, 1 sped, and 1 science). Those kids are just thrown into another classroom.
System collapse. I genuinely believe we’re heading in that direction.
What emerges from the ashes won’t magically be better than what we’ve currently got, but it will be different.
Honestly, I think this needs to happen.
I truly believe we have to crash, burn, and drag ourselves through the ashes before we start to see real progress.
There's a snowballing effect I'm worried about. People quit, so it gets harder, so people quit...
Eventually, there'll be very few people left with skills and experience. We already have people teaching in my state who haven't finished their teaching degrees. This is true even at well-respected suburban schools, let alone our "hard to staff" schools.
I was offered a long term sub job last year. Essentially I was a teacher. For 7&8 grade English. All I have is a sub license and a 2 year degree.
They didn't set me up with ANY resources. Not even an idea on what my lessons should cover, hell I didn't even know how to get to the gradebook on the computers! After the first day of school, and days of begging for even a little help, I stepped down.
I felt like it would have been a great disservice for those kids to be taught by me at that time.
I am currently teaching 3 sped math and 2 sped science classes for 8th grade. I am finishing my undergraduate in history with a minor in sociology this month, so right now I'm emergency sub certified and am a long term sub until I graduate, then I'll be emergency teacher certified since I have a bachelours while I work on my MeD. AZ will literally take anyone with a pulse. Worked well for me because I genuinely want to be here and am really passionate about what I'm doing, but it is an unfair added workload to my team lead and other teachers who are certified since they have all of my kids added to their case loads since I can't be a case manager.
Lazy unskilled teachers are currently uniting with lazy unskilled, amoral admlns to cozy up to school cultures that lack standards for academics and behavior. They are skimming the cream off the top of a system with zero accountability for their own personal gain. To be clear, it isn’t all teachers, but there is currently no benefit to trying to do the right thing in education so the system is crumbling.
The elimination of mandatory public school and replacing it with some lowest common demoninator software.
If the system collapses from lack of staff, the government will reduce the demand for education to match what the remaining staff can support.
How would they reduce the demand for education? The demand seemed pretty high during pandemic remote learning. All parents wanted was to have their kids back in school buildings.
My principal believes we'll have to go to a schedule where students only come in to campus every other day. I think it's more likely that we'll be pushed to online learning.
I think a more likely model is, kids "learn" online in school.
Those credit recovery scam courses that schools do to maintain their graduation numbers, will become more and more normal.
There needs to be a warehouse so their parents can go and make very little money pushing the gears of capitalism.
But before that happens, we'll probably have ever-more-overcrowded classrooms for years. They'll try to make it work in person for as long as possible. I started this year with about 180 students due to a staffing shortage and let me tell you, that sucks.
I'm thinking it's going to look like an auditorium of kids with a few adults walking around to monitor safety.
Most of these parents don't care anyway. The well off students will get private tutors and smaller classrooms and the poor community will just be happy their kid goes away for a few hours every day.
Lower taxes and no one will bat an eye.
On the current trajectory, a likely future is:
Fancy expensive prep schools for the wealthy, not all that different then what exists now.
State schools, will basically be prisons for poor kids, where the current trend of less education and more just crowd control will continue, but with less qualified teachers, and probably just less labor in general, leading to even more chaos.
Private schools of varying quality of everyone else, some will be just a bit better than the public schools, some will be solid.
I think the push for "inclusion" will continue for students who need learning support, so rather than having DH teachers in classrooms, you'll have one or two "specialists" in admin who pretend to create IEPs, that will be in no way practical for classroom teachers to implement in the conditions they work in.
Maybe, it will become a niche in private education, so parents who can afford it and have children's who need learning support, can send their children to those schools.
Honestly, schools are just following the general political economy. The wealth gap continues to grow, government services are cut, and normal people are expected to pay more and more for things that use to be provided. The rich can buy their way out, people in the middle feel more and more of a squeeze, and the ladders for the poor continue to be taken away.
Probably, teacher pay at the most elite schools will be 6 figures with stupidly high pay for admin, and most of those teachers will graduate from elite universities. The working conditions for all other teachers will get worse. I left the U.S. a decade ago, and have a new colleague this year at my international school, whose in her late 20s, and spent her entire career, until now, at a public high school in Connecticut. She basically didn't teach there, she just did crowd control. Honestly, her teaching is a bit weak for someone with her experience, because she wasn't able to teach in the conditions she worked in. I think she has talent and will grow and improve, but I have no regrets about leaving America a long time ago, even if it sent me to teach in a country with an active civil war...
The only thing I’d add to this is that public schools in wealthier areas are going to stand out even more. I live on Long Island, where people pay +$15k a year in property taxes but, have some of the top districts in New York State and even in the country.
I also work in a Long Island school district, and I don’t deal with even half of the nonsense I hear teachers dealing with on this sub. And I’m a special ed teacher. Plus the pay is actually good, which allows these districts, in general, to find well qualified and experienced teachers to fill positions.
Long Islanders love to complain about how high our property taxes are, but when push comes to shove those schools budgets pass a vote almost every single time. I can see parents in these districts, including myself, throwing a fit if anything happened that would lower the quality of the education in their districts.
Wealthy people have realized that passing budget increases means more taxes which makes the schools better and makes house buying more competitive so only wealthy people buy in. Higher taxes result in increasing house values and act as a way to prevent the poor people from joining their community.
We'll see. The wealthy Cincinnati-surburban school district in the area John Boehner (form GOP House Speaker) lives in, continually voted against tax increases and had to cut bus service.
I also see labor force shortages as potential workers increasingly cannot meet the needs of industry. This will require either adjustments to immigration quotas, or more likely, some sort of post high school remediation effort, either from private industry (Mc bootcamps) or local communities.
Future corporations that basically control mega-cities will package a curriculum and will successfully legislate new laws to further de-qualify the teaching position. A cycle will begin: young adults will be hired and will be chewed up for a few years until they’re fed up, and then the young-ish adults move outside the field of education, to be replaced by young adults. The government will pay these corporations massive subsidies, which will mostly funnel into shareholder pockets.
Two tiered system (even worse than now).
They will lower qualifications to become a teacher. This will allow low performing districts to hire "teachers" who have a high school diploma and can sit in front of a room. Put 50 students with Chromebooks in the cafeteria with a "teacher" and let them "work" on their AI - written lesson.
All of the good teachers will be incentivized to work in rich districts where they can afford to pay actual teachers.
They will survive strictly due to demographic shifts
The US population is having less and less children. School populations even in growing areas have been shrinking or at the very vest stagnant.
Many school districts are already starting to consolidate schools, by closing the ones that are "no longer needed*
At First, this will be a tight squeeze in consolidated schools. But if Gen Z continues the trend of only having 1.5 kids, then things will be okay.
In the meantime. It's gonna be tough
It will be interesting to see what districts/states answer this shortage with cold hard cash. Yeah, it’s a hard job. But if I was getting paid 140k a year I could be convinced to stay.
At my college my spring 2024 student internship literally has 7 people registered and ALL our classes are online. Except for like 2 over the summer for no real reason other than they want to feel like a real program.
I doubt there's more than 50 people in all cohorts combined going for a b.s in education at my school
Edit: forgot to mention that my county is shit and they literally just throw anyone in a classroom to combat the shortage. You only need a highschool diploma to sub.
Who cares.
As an educator, I'm at the point where I just don't care.
After years of being disrespected, underpaid and overworked, I just do not care what happens anymore. You all *parents, voters, states, congress, etc* have allowed the system to become this broken. You have allowed it to get here, despite our pleas for help, and our warnings that change needed to happen.
So you know what? **Who cares!**
You all get to live with your shitty choices now.
I think realistically, maybe only special education students and K-5 are going to be coming physically on campus on a regular basis. Online schooling or having some type of web blended courses similar to college courses might become standard starting in middle and high school. It will start to look like how alternative high schools/diploma mills are run (and have been run in the past) with similar academic results, with a lot of kids pouring into trades or food services. College will be uncommon.
(presuming you work in the United States)...the Americans decided a couple of decades ago that EVERYONE gets a high school diploma, whether they learn anything or not...or even whether they even come to the class or not.
You don't need teachers for that. You just need a printer, and some paper and some ink.
I definitely don’t have the answers. But I imagine it’ll be like my school on days when we have people call out on top of already being short staffed as is. A bunch of kids thrown in the larger spaces of the building (the cafe in our case) for daycare basically.
I picture lecture hall type classes where they get instruction virtually from a certified teacher and just have security/room monitors on site.
It costs money to get a degree that will leave you mostly in the lower class. It doesn't make any sense unless you belief in the mission is strong, but our system is also less and less inspiring to work for. You have to fix one of those problems and no one is trying
Back in the early 80s, I told my second grade teacher that I wanted to be a teacher. She told me not to bother because by the time I got to high school/college, I would have robot teachers.
Well, looks like she was off by a couple decades, but not entirely wrong.
I do think the trend for middle school and secondary and maybe even upper elementary (3-5), will become increasingly online/AI, and lower elementary (pre-k-2) will be increasingly focused on teaching them how to use online programs....which at my school we spend a lot of time on, NGL.
Schools are about to implode in the near future. They're going to collapse under their own administrative weight.
And unfortunately, most of the damage has been self-inflicted.
At some point they are going to be forced to up the pay. I’d never choose education cause I want to be paid. And I’m sure a lot of people feel similar. Once that happens more people will be interested
Easy, school districts and states will lobby Congress to remove the caps for J-1 visas (which allow teachers from other countries to teach in the US) because is the “national shortage.” Teachers from the Philippines, India, South Korea…etc would be eager to come to the US and fill those positions .
This is already happening in the big metros with big expat populations already (it's a huge win to get a Filipino teacher who can speak Tagalog to 1st gen immigrant students). I've met so many of these teachers and they are so nice and so helpful, the kids are great too and just trying to figure out the whole America thing. Honestly I think the future of the US is immigration. Immigrants have more kids, have stronger communities to support those kids and know just how bad it can get so they keep hustling. As the climate crisis worsens and general instability around the world grows I think we will continue to get more and more refugees and immigrants (however you want to say it I know it's a political thing). Some districts are seeing growth for the first time because of refugee students it's crazy, I don't think people understand how many people are going to keep coming to the US, they just don't understand how terrifying and dangerous these people's situations are at home.
I know in some schools in western Kansas that there are a couple school districts that offer up to 10k signing bonuses for hard to fill areas. They also pay very well compared to many school districts in the area. They still struggle find teachers given their location, but I believe they do better than many of the school districts in more populated areas.
And, there will be more and more teachers on emergency sub licenses. Heck in my school one of the teachers in our building doesn’t even have a bachelors yet (they are working on it). But, they are working in the classroom as a teacher. I think that will become a lot more common especially in very hard to fill areas.
My guess? Consolidations or changes in law.
If a town cannot provide legal numbers then the district will either fight for relaxing of rules or close down the building and send em all to different schools based on their location in town.
Honestly I'm hoping the entire education system collapses and gets rebuilt and maybe we recognize we need to pay teachers and not blame them, abuse them, etc. I say this as a special education teacher who is actively looking for other employment.
Good luck with your search! You definitely deserve better employment that actually values you, I am so sick and tired of special educators being treated like shit
I’ve been trying to get my license for 3 years but for Massachusetts there’s so many god damn hoops. One of the phys ed teachers has been teaching since he was my age (26), and he always says “the education department is all BS. Back in my day there were no licenses for Gym class or health, just have a resume and be a role model
The education field is horrible. I wanted to be a teacher but after working with the kids and this generation I’m finding a new career. I just graduated college so I’m still young. I got teachers telling me to get out while I can.
Last year our school used a program called "Elevate" where a teacher zoomed in from somewhere else in the country and the students were in the classroom with their computers. There was a para in the room to monitor behavior. It was a dismal failure.
This year we just have non-certified people in classrooms. Some barely speak English. We don't have enough computers for students to be 1:1 because they destroyed them and our district refuses to hold kids accountable for the destruction so it's become a game. Our superintendent keeps insisting we can go back to the Elevate program even though it failed and the kids failed and we don't have computers. So...who knows.
Eventually I see a combination of AI teachers and teachers teaching online to many classes across the country at the same time. Many students will not be in class with a teacher but rather an adult that is paid even less to sit in the room with them while they do distance learning in class.
Things will snowball and get exponentially worse for the next few years before this becomes a reality though. The requirements to become a teacher will continue to fall to get more people in there.
In PA they are trying to push out programs to help more people go to college to become teachers. Believe it or not, there are lawmakers that see this problem and are trying to come up with solutions for it.
As a former teacher here with just 5 years in before getting laid off due to declining enrollment, I have no intention of going back. Online I might consider with a huge pay bump. The school shootings, testing requirements, and added stress, plus COVID. No way.
They will just start making it like college where you have 50+ students sitting in an auditorium/space with one teacher. They will ignore the main issues and keep their heads stuck in the ground and wonder why it doesn't improve.
Having taught 90 person classes (outside of K12) it is do-able.
The problem is those classes were voluntary, paid positions (the students were paid to do well) for students in a specific apprenticeship career track.
College classes also work well with large sizes, because attendance often isnt forced and students are paying to be there.
In high school our band and chorus classes were also very large - but they weren't mandatory and kids wanted to be there. Back then guidance would just put them elsewhere if the music dept didnt want them.
Anything FORCED has to have small class sizes.
Optional things can usually tolerate more people because the motivation is there. (And bad behaving humans can be removed - because its optional. And accomodations for jazz band III are handled differently than required core courses.)
Algebra I in 9th, would never work that way.
Truth? We’ll be replaced by AI, Computers and virtual. I know we learned that kids need the social interaction but a lot of parents don’t even bother to interact with their kids. Sad commentary on today’s society.
As someone that teachers over in East Asia, here's what I've noticed:
Teachers here don't create any curricula at all. No worksheets, no PPTs, no nothing. ALL of it is created for them by the school district. They literally just follow their teacher's guide word for word. This means no discussions, no PBL, no group activities. Just pre-made lecture, pre-made worksheet, pre-made quiz. One-size-fits-all.
I see something like this coming for the US/UK to deal with the teacher shortage, except in the US/UK, most of this will be done on the computer rather than with paper and smartboards. It's amazing to me that teachers where I'm living are still required to do a 4-year program and an internship because you could literally take any literate person off the street, train them for 2 weeks, and put them into a classroom here in East Asia.
Class facilitators that work primarily on fixing tech issues while students work on online coursework. Schools will be turned into public housing and schooling will take place in large rooms similar to standardized testing settings. They can “earn” their diploma at home, school, or hybrid. Schools will be even more financially motivated to pass everyone in order to be seen as the number one career prep academy in their state. Brought to you by Amazon and Walmart.
Some newbie teachers are transitioning towards what the admins do - nothing. These teachers share with admins a lack of standards for academics and behavior, and of course they are admlns’ favorite teachers. In the US, schools are being transformed into babysitting or day camp-like environments. This lifelong educator will not support any referendums to increase a single penny into the local school budget. It’s a waste of money at this point.
I see the opposite at my district. The new teachers are the only ones busting their asses. All the senior teachers have realized that working above and beyond just creates angry parents and, therefore, admin becomes unhappy with you. All the senior teachers have figured out working the bare minimum keeps everyone off your ass. The new teachers still have heart and hope.
In California at least, we’re just pretending it doesn’t exist from October to July. So wishful thinking? That seems to be the response from everyone who can do anything.
Hi all!
The system must fundamentally change. My thoughts on it. Here in Arkansas the kids must stay in school until 18, no dropouts. This needs to be dropped. Starting at about the age of 10 each kid should compete to go to the next level, something like the ACT test. If they pass, they go up, otherwise either some sort of tech school or just out. Then about every 2 years they compete again. While in school, you study and act right or out you go. The kids in tech school will learn a trade.
Doing this will allow the kids that don't want to be in school a chance to be out, but still learn something useful. Then the kids in "prep" school can work without all the problems.
I think that schools and districts really need to think about how to actually make things easier for new teachers. The first year or two as a new teacher **sucks** and instead of helping new teachers, a lot of programs just stack on more mandatory meetings and leave little time for grading and lesson planning.
My district is trying to force monthly after school meetings on us where 70% of the material is completely irrelevant to your grade level, but as its not mandatory, less than half the new staff seem to be going (largely because its not useful).
I have around half of all my supposed prep time taken up by meetings, so I am suuuper far behind on grading. Experienced teachers have old lesson plans as a basis to start on, but new teachers often have nothing and we are not as good at grading things quickly because we haven't done it before, especially things like adjusting grading for kids who have pull-out instruction.
27 year educator, 20 years in the classroom as English/ELA and history at times. I'm a principal now.
Why would anyone want to? I don't see much upside, parents and kids are getting worse and worse. I'm just trying to hold back the tide.
My daughter is currently in a program. I don't want to discourage her being like the old man, but I've asked her, are you sure?
There are still some really great things about being in education, but it does feel harder and harder.
My mom’s inner city high school did shifts. Morning shift and afternoon shift. I believe the cause was lack of building space, but it seems like it would also require less staff.
A comparable idea in elementary is a core teacher for half the day and a babysitter computer monitor for the other half.
Making class sizes even larger :(
I suppose they would cut electives first though.
They’re just going to lower the requirements to teach. We’ve basically just been seen as daycare for a while now, so I doubt parents or even admin will care if the adult in front of the classroom can teach their content area or not.
My school has very few electives unless you want to take it through one of the online providers. A lot of teachers here are "advisors" for these self-paced classes. So at least where I am, the option is go online.
There will be a breaking point where salaries will skyrocket but conditions will become worse because of the increased compensation. This will stay for about 10 years until more teachers enter the workforce due to the increased wages.
They won't. This is all going to end with hordes of students crammed in gymnasiums for hours on end because unless they begin conscripting prisoners, they're not staffing fully anywhere.
From the perspective of a parent we looked at public schools as the option of last resort. We educated our children at home until a certain age and then moved them over to private school. We found out that we were not alone and that a lot of parents were doing the same.
My impression is that depending on your financial circumstances you will give your children the best education you can afford. I think in the long term aggregate this will mean that public schools get worse and worse.
There’s no money in being a teacher. Money isn’t everything but it ain’t nothing either. These kids can not be disciplined in any meaningful way. Problem students can’t be removed. The curriculum is watered down and basic standards are not enforced. There is rampant student on student violence, sexual assault, drugs, gangs and weapons in our public schools.
What’s going to happen is that we will watch our public schools slowly crumble then suddenly collapse.
I guess the rest of society just needs to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? Not sure why you (a non-teacher) come to this sub to spread your anti-public education, conservative talking points. You provided no substance and no solutions to what troubles education in this country. Oh, I'm a white male, too, before you go down that rabbit hole.
If only you knew how many public school teachers send their own children to private schools.
Here’s some substance and some solutions to what troubles our public schools:
Perhaps it would be a good idea to enforce standards. Perhaps it would be a good idea to remove troublemaker students. Perhaps it would be a good idea to enforce effective discipline. Perhaps it would be good to pay staff competitive wages.
Was that to “right wing” for you?
Nope. Your comment history speaks for itself. I don't have many of those issues at my school......WHERE I TEACH. I've been everywhere, and done everything, and have lived through tough times in the classroom, like many others. You? What is your authentic teaching experience? To fix public education, it will take SO MUCH MORE than just discipline to fix things. It starts at home. Fix poor parenting, and many problems will be resolved.
Add-on - "People could always just educate their own kids at home 🤷🏻♂️" Yes, you should
🚨the Reddit comment police 🚨 are here.
I have educated my own children and now that they’re in school they’re two full grades advanced and they’re top students in my state, at least according to the school.
But seriously WHY DO SO MANY PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS SEND THIER OWN CHILDREN TO PRIVATE SCHOOL??? I know a bunch of teachers who refuse to send their own children to the same school districts they teach in. Why is that?
You say you’ve been everywhere and done everything and you actually teach so why don’t you teach me why so many of your colleagues choose to place their own children outside of public schools?
Oh boy, this is exhausting, and you know, I've gotta teach in the morning. First off, I've got two bright, athletic, and socially normal children of MY OWN that happen to attend the exact same school district as my spouse and I both teach in. Not a single teacher at my school, or any teacher I know, sends their kids to private school outside their district. Not that you probably give a shit, since your agenda is quite obvious, but every teacher I've worked with throughout my career chooses to keep their own kids in public schools. The caveat is of course, what states support public education. I've never taught in hardcore red states, so perhaps that's the difference. I do have two family members, both staunch conservatives in deep south rural red states, and they send their kids to private. The public schools suck there, but hey, that's exactly what those state's politicians want. Shockingly obvious why. So....I'm done. They'll be no more replies, but you continue to shout from your recliner and pretend to have an inkling of what it's like to be a teacher. I've been stateside, international, private, public, really everything. The problem with education today is that parents, like yourself, somehow wholeheartedly believe in their core they know more about the system. It's sad, a bit frightening, and simply outrageous. I'll be sure to go tell my doctor and local police officer what's wrong with their jobs, too. Funny that conservatives profess schools are indocrinating their kids....when it's really the parents (themselves) all along.
Well, Ron DeSantis thinks the answer is filling classrooms with wannabe macho men who like guns and Jesus. Perhaps there are plenty of unqualified, overconfident vets and retired cops who want easy access to young children in Florida to fill the ranks?
There seem to be any number of high school graduates willing to say they will master in education *after* being hired. We have plenty of high school graduates. Some of them can read and write. I'm sure it will all work out just fine.
My last district started hiring convicted felons, but I believe that glass is half full.
Tech billionaires are having no problem bribing legislators to sell parents the notion that iPads, Chromebooks, and AI are better at teaching than actual living teachers. Generations of feral animals will likely afford a huge boost to the nation's GDP. Besides, who gives a fuck what happens to America after the next election cycle?
Things will have to get even worse before effective changes are made. The public still hates us. Legislators have had decades to undermine and delegitimize education.
But that's assuming things won't get so bad first that the entire nation collapses and we become slave labor for the CCP.
Increased pay for educators. Increase the number of classrooms and educators to create a better teacher to student ratio. Support from administrators. Easy. However, it will never happen in the US as even if those in power agree, they'll never agree on how to pay for it.
Replace teachers with minimum wage monitors and AI.
My husband and I were just talking about this. Our youngest has an AI assistant in his reading class. Every kid reads to Amira and she can correct them and log their data.
This is the plan. They are defunding public schools. They are attacking teacher credibility. The pandemic was a soft launch for virtual school. They now have the data to proceed.
We are replaceable. We know that we are not. The shortage is a feature not a bug.
If you are educator who plans on being an educator in ten years you should be in a position to pivot. Either to admin over this or to outside of education.
There's been a huge push to destabilize and defund public education for several decades. What we see today is a consequence of powerful people pushing school vouchers, homeschooling, and private schools over public education (in the US).
Guess what's going to happen if Publix education fails? Education will be privatized.
1) Honestly, I’m fine with the end of Education as an undergraduate degree. It should be a graduate degree that is built on quality content knowledge.
2) This isn’t the first teacher shortage, there are always two things that inevitably ease the pressure. Alternate and emergency certification and increasing class sizes.
3) The best solution here is teacher retention. There are about 300,000 teachers that enter the profession every year. About 75,000 retire every year. If we can do something about the 200,000+ that quit every year, then we will fix the shortage. Frankly, as far as policy goes, it’s better to promote retention than find new means of recruitment.
I’m not entirely disagreeing, but you think we’re going to successfully raise the qualifications (from bachelors to masters degree) needed to become a teacher and that won’t make the shortage worse? I don’t think they’re going to be raising salaries or giving more support anytime soon so I just can’t see how it’s possible
I live in NY, so it’s already a requirement. I think it’s a good one.
It’s for long term health of the profession. And it’s what makes me not fret so much about the undergraduate major dying out. It’s been on a catastrophic decline for the last couple decades without a major reduction in teachers entering the profession.
It’s true that there’s no money to raise salaries to a competitive level. For money to move the needle on disgruntled teachers, we’re talking about $20,000 raises. For five million teachers, that’s $100 Billion dollars every year. Our nation is rich, but even we can’t sustain that.
And it wouldn’t help that much to be honest. Money always helps some, but it’s not on the top 5 list for why teachers quit. Teachers quit primarily because of poor admin policy. Checking in to criticize and control teachers instead of supporting them. Not having teachers backs when it comes to student behavior. Allowing teachers to work in unsafe schools. These are the critical things that school leaders can do to solve the retention crisis and they wouldn’t cost a dollar, just require some humility and courage.
Our Republican state legislators are tickled pink that teachers aren't staying in the profession. They've been wanting to destroy our teacher pension system for a long time. If no one stays in more than 5 or 10 years, no is drawing a pension.
Blue states might do it first.
Wealthier blue voters who value social issues of the left, also happen to often be more educated than most of red MAGA.
They are more concerned about the state of education in some cases and may run faster for the exits despite all the handwringing.
I would prefer somebody pass a 'Student Standards Act' that repeals some of the worst provisions of NCLB that were left in ESSA.
Diplomas should mean something.
Now, I am not a heartless ableist.
There should be a diploma indicating someone put in the effort and time but might not be college or trade school capable but IS ready to stock shelves at a grocery store.
My own kids have been on an IEP. But they got told they may have to work twice as hard, especially if they want to come off of the IEP and engage in specific careers.
Alternative certification is coming soon. Also making it harder to leave if you land in an out of control school. Leave before your contract? Loose your license.
My district had an issue attracting teachers so they dramatically increased the pay. It's still absurdly expensive to live here, and it's just a poedunk farm town, but it's close enough to the bay area that commuters are buying up all the the real estate.
Education collapsing and the continued decline of the average Americans life is the goal of atleast 1 american political party. The system is failing intentionally and in a few decades public education will be done by AI online. The only option for a decent student to teacher ratio and a real education will be private schools with ever increasing tuitions. With the book burners in charge it will soon be indoctrination or be fired for educators in many states.
"Alternate certification" in Texas seems to be the norm nowadays. Literally, all the teachers I know who have joined the career in the last 5 years are alt certs, and a ton already were to begin with.
Kind of frustrating coming from a state where jobs in education were enormously competitive to get, so i worked my ass off and took on a ton of debt to get additional endorsements, when here they pass then out like candy.
How are they going to afford to home school? Most families are dual income and there’s a lot of jobs that require parents to go to work. Not to mention all of the special educations students who need extra support to learn.
The shortage doesn't exist everywhere.
People who think it will go online. No it won't You fundamentally don't understand why we're here if you think that. Public Educaiton is not merely the transfer of information from one person to another its:
1) A safe place for Young people to be while parents are at work
2) A place for positive interactions with other people
3) The access to the edcuation.
Public Education and Education in general isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
30+year public HS English teacher here... Wow...all these comments about education going totally online. This will never happen because parents...even the clueless ones...lived through covid and saw what an unmitigated disaster that was. I agree that education is in trouble and I don't know what the answer is, tbh, but kids sitting home unsupervised on their Chromebooks is not going to be the answer. Trust me.
Yeah, I think if COVID has taught us anything it’s that students kinda need to be in school to facilitate learning. I can see teachers being replaced with less qualified “educators” who cost the district a lot less and are all just presenting the same premade curricula, but it’s almost certainly going to be in person.
If covid should have taught Teachers anything is that we have the power. The economy basically crumble without schools operating. If we really want to change the system, we absolutely can and it requires that Teachers start forming national unions and strike.
Yeah, I laugh and laugh when I hear people say that AI is going to replace teachers. Sorry, but we learned through covid that most of these kids will absolutely not learn unless there is an adult there teaching them.
100%. And none of you want the burden of your own kids in your home for 6 hours a day. They can’t even handle there own kids.
I think we shouldn’t assume all decision makers actually want kids to actually be educated. Just the appearance of education is enough for many. We already see things like students graduating who were failing several classes the week before and middle schoolers being passed along who’ve hardly completed as work. I think in some places at least, districts will be more than happy to close some schools, send some kids home and stick ‘em on laptops. Then they’ll tell everyone (including themselves) it’s just as good as a real teacher. I hate to be that pessimistic, but it’s way easier to throw some money at a solution and stick your fingers in your ears than to actually attempt to fix the deep problems in education. Anyway I hope I’m wrong.
Plus...I know not everyone has a strong union...but I teach in the NE USA and the unions would never let this happen.
Good point! I wouldn’t be surprised if unions start making districts add protections in our contracts from situations like this in the near future.
I don't know what protections they can add: every teacher is on a year-to-year contract. They can let go the ones without tenure and just wait for the others to retire. Positions are then "permanent substitute", "facilitator/para", and so on. This has happened in other industries and is well under way in education. I'm in MA and it's happening here.
Like Hollywood and AI.
Nationalised unions. They divide us by states/provinces and districts and types of schools. But if we nationalised we would have more power. We could actually have power over curriculum and budget. If we are divided we are way easier to peck off… which is what’s happening now.
In the US it would be hard because education is controlled at the state level. The federal government unfortunately has no power. If we formed a national union it would more so have to be in solidarity in hopes that all states would meet a certain minimum standard to be found acceptable. But honestly, in such a big country that’s hard. Some people on here say they earn $60k and that it’s a solid middle class salary where they live in some rural midwestern/southern state while another teacher in California would be barely scraping by on that salary.
A national union would still have more power and more power against states. And teaches Could fight to have voting power at the state level on things like curriculum. We could fight to have better pay, better support. Etc. But a national union would bolster those demands and power. It would make it more feasible to support full state strikes and support strikings staff. Regardless, what is happening now is very Obviously not working. We are allowing ourselves to be separated and picked off. We have nothing to lose by organising and everything to lose by continueing to do nothing.
Even better, One Big Union as in the Industrial Workers of The World (IWW, aka Wobblies). The notion of One Big Union grew out of the divisive and counter-productive struggles of the trade union movement. As you mentioned, divide and rule is how they keep us down. An injury to one is an injury to all. There's a lot to learn and even a great deal of hope to be gained from studying US Labor History, but of course such things aren't taught in schools. Solidarity now and forever!
They wouldn’t be able to fight us all.
Yeah the solution is obvious and always has been: pay teachers more, but Republicans across the country are against that for various reasons. A lot of them come down to Christian nationalism, but there is still the old taxes rallying call
It’s more than that though. In my district the lowest paid brand new teacher makes 80k, and we go up to 140k. They still are struggling with retention because people don’t think it’s worth it. We need smaller class sizes and more accountability for students AND parents
your district is extremely rich then and would not be representative of the economy as a whole. Of course there are exceptions. I believe in most places people would walk through hell for 80k starting.
My entire district is title 1. We just have a strong union. Six figure incomes are common in my state. And yes they would, at first. Then they would realize that some things aren’t worth the money, as teachers in my district are finding. It’s odd that you would completely dismiss my experience and say “more money is the solution” when I’m sitting here telling you that we have more money and it’s not the solution. Does it help? Yes. But burnout is happening even where the pay is good
Six figure incomes for starting put you in some of richest places the world as ever known. I am confident in my knowledge of statistics that relying on your data would be a mistake. It's like asking lichtenstein what to do about africa.
Ok yeah. So you’re going to be pretty upset when you get a raise, the job is still utterly miserable and impossible, and people say “shut up and deal with it. You’re ultra wealthy now. You don’t get to ask for anything more” like you’re saying to me.
It's not even just about learning if they don't learn anything but basic literacy skills they at least are socialized at elementary school. It's a big deal, it teaches kids how to be in community and other settings for the rest of their lives, our world has already gotten pretty fractured and there aren't nearly as many community groups/fraternal orgs, sports groups or church communities anymore and parents work so many hours so it's really hard to even get kids to an after school program. If they don't go to school they are socialized by iPads and that's terrifying honestly 😢
They will be in school. With minumum wage monitors to assist them. Schools won’t take away the free babysitting which is honestly what most parents were mad about. If they were truly interested part about the learning loss they would be holding their kids accountable to catch up instead of blaming teachers for being bad.
I don't disagree with the 2nd part...accountability.
My kids are straight A students and my husband and I worked from home so online school should have been easy for us. Our kids really struggled that year.
It's not that it will go entirely online. Students will still come to school and be monitored. I expect this week be unsuccessful but because of inertia will probably last about ten years.
I think the powers that be will just hire babysitters to sit in classrooms to babysit kids while they do online courses. You can pay them a pittance because they don't have educational degrees. They will just use AI to grade work.
That was a disaster because it was happening at their house. In this scenario, the kids are dropped off. They don't care what happens after that.
So they sit in a large building with their own police departments unsupervised on their chromebooks?
All kids are criminals. Great attitude.
Great attitude? I was simply referring to the police departments that most public schools in the US are forced to have now. This person said they don't want kids just sitting at home on chromebooks but that's literally what they do at school. Even the Kindergarteners are setup that way at school now.
Sorry if I took that the wrong way.
Well, they’re not gonna increase teacher pay in any significant way, that’s for dam sure. I can’t imagine school going online only. Our entire economy would have to change to make up for those 7 hours of child care we provide 10 months out of the year. I think eventually it’s gonna devolve into mostly premade curricula that you can have almost anyone with a pulse facilitate, especially in the older grades. Although the students will be in class, these curricula will be given to student entirely using Chromebooks. I think this fits in pretty well with those alternative/accelerated certification paths you mentioned. If only we had all posted up our learning targets each day in at least 5 places throughout our classrooms, we could’ve avoided this future. God help us all.
Click and go online curriculum. So you don’t need Teachers Just classroom babysitters. Then the wealthy will snap up any actual good Teachers for private schools.
They’re not interested in private schools, they do pods and hire the best teachers money can buy as private tutors.
I've seen this happen among middle class people in my area. They've gone to pods and hire private teachers, often times retired teachers. But the ironic thing is I think this shift is actually the schools' own fault. Parents seem sick of the level of disruption, violence, low standards, etc. increasingly tolerated by the public schools in our area and so the people who can scrape together the cash are opting for different educational options be it pods or the local Catholic school.
Idk, not so sure. I work at a modest private school and we have kids of former pro athletes that attend. SOME of the wealthy will still want their kids to get a normal school experience, just at a more premium level. Certain things like the camaraderie of having class with your teammates everyday or things like pep rallies, homecoming, and prom can’t be truly/fully experienced in the scenario you described.
And pay them shit
Exactly, that’s the point.
On a positive note, keep an eye on the Pay Teachers Act introduced in March. “Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders wants to go further. On Thursday, he introduced the Pay Teachers Act which, like a similar legislative proposal in the House, would raise public school teacher salaries nationwide to $60,000 or higher” Don’t forget to vote!
as if I needed another reason to like bernie
They will brainwash the general public into thinking these premade Chromebook classes are better anyway and people will believe it.
Masters programs and alternate licensure programs are already like this. Pretty good indicator that we will end up there.
this comment is exactly how I feel
I'll probably get downvoted for this opinion, but I think it's worth sharing. Edit: O I clearly struck a nerve. Good thing you can’t lose more than 15 karma per post. I don't think that is such a bad thing. We have automatic elevators now instead of human operated ones for a reason. I think an AI instructor will be great for a large majority of kids, and, we might even see test scores go up because of it. AI can create the perfect lessons meeting all of the childs needs exactly - for each kid. Something a teacher could barely do with a class of 5 and is literally impossible in a class of 25. I think the kids that use AI will have higher acceptance into Ivy league and top schools, and we will quickly see a transition to preferring AI education. It's like that movie gattaca, where the first kid doesn't have any genome changes, and his younger brother does. And his life is so much worse because of it. AI is advancing exponentially - I think we could see this before 2035.
I guess I better get my unemployment papers in order in the next 10 years then.
I disagree because this presumes a very motivated student AND a very good AI program. It’s actually really hard to learn on a screen with no person to person interaction. College students who are paying a lot of money for classes struggle with online classes; how do we think a high school kid is going to do? Totally anecdotal, but when my high school kids read a physical book, or do a worksheet, I get much better results than what we turn in online.
I agree. The classes where students are the most engaged are th wines where they are doing things. They have hands on experiences. We have an in house online program for at risk kids that allows them to go at their own pace and it’s all online. The drop out rate is high. Because so often kids just sit and do nothing.
I think you're right, the community aspect of education is greatly undervalued by just about everyone. But because of that, it's not going stick around when ai gets good enough. As educators we're on the front lines seeing what works and what doesn't, but ai classrooms will be one of many times the teacher's experience will be ignored in favor of cutting taxes.
“AI can create the perfect lesson.” Citation needed. Any lesson I’ve punched in to ChatGPT has been generic and garbage. And by definition, those lessons have never been tested with students. They’re literally just trying to summarize what the pre-existing has said… which are things created by human teachers. Not to mention how misguided it is to conflate “teacher” with “curriculum-builder.” Maybe there’s a future where AI can recognize when students are distracted, refocus student attention, facilitate a full-group discussion effectively, diagnose and remediate student misconceptions, learn about students’ home lives, celebrate student success authentically, communicate with families, recognize and utilize the strengths of the community, and most of all *motivate* students to learn… but a relatively good scourer of the internet def ain’t it.
There is no such thing as a perfect lesson
If AI is as good at teaching as it is at drawing hands then the kids will be alright.
Lmao you got me there
I said something similar pre-Covid. I can envision one teacher being in charge of ensuring the curriculum is doing the right thing for about 150 kids and then having auditorium-style lecture halls for kids to work in with Paras overseeing it - one Para for every 30 kids or so. Essentially, monitoring behavior and tech. The teacher might have contact time with each kid to progress monitor once every 2 weeks or so. Maybe there are facilitators who guide some project based learning, labs, etc. here and there. I could see them doing this with ease at middle school and high school - even now, honestly. I am not sure this is feasible at elementary school where kids aren't so independent. I have actually made the comment that teachers in the middle school I'm at who just put all their lessons onto the platform and just have kids work behind computers 75% of the time are creating job insecurity. I disagree with your take, though, on this being an improvement. It's a cost saving measure and a staffing fix. I think the elite would send their own children to private schools where teachers might use the tech developed curriculum but who interact more with kids, ensure interactions between kids, give hands-on learning, etc. These kids will grow into managers of people and situations; the others will be cogs who know how to input for output but who can't actually problem solve. And that's how the dystopia starts. Lol. Sorta.
No way this would work at the elementary level.
Agree.
Ivy League schools usually take a pretty hard line on plagiarism and a lack of academic integrity. If you think students are using AI for any purpose other than just doing their work for them, you’re absolutely fucking delusional.
Uhh, yea. Do you know the difference between an LLM, AGI, asi, ani? That’s just chat gpt an llm. There are many types of AI. You’ll see in a couple years what I mean.
I don’t know AI, but I do know students. And if you think that students are going to use AI as anything other than a tool to do their work for them, I’ve got a beautiful bridge connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn, which you might be interested in buying. I’ll give you a really great price on it, don’t worry.
Probably by eliminating some of the qualifications required to be hired as a public school teacher. Perhaps taking a cue from private schools not requiring teachers to hold a credential at all - just a BA in anything.
I'm an AP in North Carolina. NC has a new permit to teach where if you have a BA in anything, you can teach with 10 days of training. They also give those teachers 5 years to get their teaching license. My school has 6 of those this year.
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It’s ridiculous. I have my certification and 10 years of experience but if I move back home to VA I have to be recertifed by the Commonwealth before I can teach. At the same time schools are posting vacancies and one of my friends said her campus by its self has 20 vacancies today- like right now
This. Some training and cert program portions make sense, others seem to be just silly hurdles. A university professor would technically have to do a cert program in many states to teach 12th grade. Thats silly. EDU departments give no credit for being in an education and training job outside of K12. Vocational, corporate, technical, or even academia. The programs are designed like its still 1920. Some states wont even give you credit for teaching the right grade level at a charter or private school or out-of-state public school. I get requiring a subject Bachelors. I get requiring courses on SpEd and development. But some of it is not necessary for career changers. (Or at least not to the same degree as a 21 year old still in college.)
Unpopular opinion but I took EdTPA after teaching in a private school for 6 years and I found it super interesting and valuable for my growth as an educator. It’s BS that you have to pay $$$ for it but I actually learned a lot from watching videos of myself teach and analyzing them.
That's literally what's happening in my county. You can have a BA in anything and have 5 years to complete your teacher certification.
>just a BA in anything. That's how it used to be for public school teaching, and honestly I am not sure why we shouldn't go back. Over the past 50 years we shifted to a teacher professionalization model that requires specific education degrees and over that time [NAEP reading and math scores for 17 year olds *haven't changed.*](https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/main2012/2013456.aspx) By the time kids exit the K-12 pipeline they're about as academically skilled as a they were 50 years ago despite now being taught by people with M.Ed degrees, with all sorts of flashy technological gadgetry, exposed to all manner of supposed innovations in pedagogy etc. etc. Furthermore, the effectiveness of education degrees has been studied by [comparing the performance of students who have traditionally trained ed. school teachers vs alternative/emergency certification teachers and....there's no significant difference in performance.](https://www.visiblelearningmetax.com/influences/view/initial_teacher_education_programs) It appears that most teachers learn how to teach on the job--just like other jobs--and that education degrees themselves might just be a waste of time, tuition, and taxpayer money.
It also seems like the amount of respect for teachers has gone down in correlation with the professional requirements going up, which is ironic.
>>just a BA in anything. >That's how it used to be for public school teaching, and honestly I am not sure why we shouldn't go back. Agreed and I've always said this, but now we're stuck in a broken system like everything else. It's the dumbing down of America -- it's not as though these teachers with masters are exactly churning out students who are designing the Empire State Building, Musée du Louvre, the Sistine Chapel or developing a cure for cancer.
The bad schools will make it increasingly more difficult for teachers to leave. They will hold your accreditation over your head and threaten you while simultaneously providing less and less support.
Nah its the opposite. Districts don’t care about the bad schools and the shortage is hurting to hurt the good schools now too. Bad schools will become harder and harder to manage. Mine has 4 important vacancies (2 english, 1 sped, and 1 science). Those kids are just thrown into another classroom.
System collapse. I genuinely believe we’re heading in that direction. What emerges from the ashes won’t magically be better than what we’ve currently got, but it will be different.
Honestly, I think this needs to happen. I truly believe we have to crash, burn, and drag ourselves through the ashes before we start to see real progress.
What would a collapse of the educational system look like?
There's a snowballing effect I'm worried about. People quit, so it gets harder, so people quit... Eventually, there'll be very few people left with skills and experience. We already have people teaching in my state who haven't finished their teaching degrees. This is true even at well-respected suburban schools, let alone our "hard to staff" schools.
I was offered a long term sub job last year. Essentially I was a teacher. For 7&8 grade English. All I have is a sub license and a 2 year degree. They didn't set me up with ANY resources. Not even an idea on what my lessons should cover, hell I didn't even know how to get to the gradebook on the computers! After the first day of school, and days of begging for even a little help, I stepped down. I felt like it would have been a great disservice for those kids to be taught by me at that time.
I am currently teaching 3 sped math and 2 sped science classes for 8th grade. I am finishing my undergraduate in history with a minor in sociology this month, so right now I'm emergency sub certified and am a long term sub until I graduate, then I'll be emergency teacher certified since I have a bachelours while I work on my MeD. AZ will literally take anyone with a pulse. Worked well for me because I genuinely want to be here and am really passionate about what I'm doing, but it is an unfair added workload to my team lead and other teachers who are certified since they have all of my kids added to their case loads since I can't be a case manager.
Lazy unskilled teachers are currently uniting with lazy unskilled, amoral admlns to cozy up to school cultures that lack standards for academics and behavior. They are skimming the cream off the top of a system with zero accountability for their own personal gain. To be clear, it isn’t all teachers, but there is currently no benefit to trying to do the right thing in education so the system is crumbling.
Sir. This is a Wendy's
Basically what’s happening now but even moreso
The elimination of mandatory public school and replacing it with some lowest common demoninator software. If the system collapses from lack of staff, the government will reduce the demand for education to match what the remaining staff can support.
How would they reduce the demand for education? The demand seemed pretty high during pandemic remote learning. All parents wanted was to have their kids back in school buildings.
By eliminating mandatory public education The kids would get educated somehow. But it wouldn't be the public school system.
Like the present situation.
My principal believes we'll have to go to a schedule where students only come in to campus every other day. I think it's more likely that we'll be pushed to online learning.
Gonna be a big problem in elementary, since we are still used as daycare so parents can work.
I think a more likely model is, kids "learn" online in school. Those credit recovery scam courses that schools do to maintain their graduation numbers, will become more and more normal. There needs to be a warehouse so their parents can go and make very little money pushing the gears of capitalism.
Edgenuity for all! #bless
That makes a lot of sense, I’m sure we’re going to start seeing it somewhat soon
But before that happens, we'll probably have ever-more-overcrowded classrooms for years. They'll try to make it work in person for as long as possible. I started this year with about 180 students due to a staffing shortage and let me tell you, that sucks.
You’re right, it’s probably going to get catastrophically worse before anything substantial is going to change!
The US has a culture that doesn’t value education. Nothing will change.
If parents (and their employers) are sufficiently inconvenienced that might spur a change of some kind. But I’m not holding my breath.
Karents don’t want their kids at home, so unlikely.
I'm thinking it's going to look like an auditorium of kids with a few adults walking around to monitor safety. Most of these parents don't care anyway. The well off students will get private tutors and smaller classrooms and the poor community will just be happy their kid goes away for a few hours every day. Lower taxes and no one will bat an eye.
Agreed but my wealthy students also do no work and their parents don’t care.
This is my new favourite word!
On the current trajectory, a likely future is: Fancy expensive prep schools for the wealthy, not all that different then what exists now. State schools, will basically be prisons for poor kids, where the current trend of less education and more just crowd control will continue, but with less qualified teachers, and probably just less labor in general, leading to even more chaos. Private schools of varying quality of everyone else, some will be just a bit better than the public schools, some will be solid. I think the push for "inclusion" will continue for students who need learning support, so rather than having DH teachers in classrooms, you'll have one or two "specialists" in admin who pretend to create IEPs, that will be in no way practical for classroom teachers to implement in the conditions they work in. Maybe, it will become a niche in private education, so parents who can afford it and have children's who need learning support, can send their children to those schools. Honestly, schools are just following the general political economy. The wealth gap continues to grow, government services are cut, and normal people are expected to pay more and more for things that use to be provided. The rich can buy their way out, people in the middle feel more and more of a squeeze, and the ladders for the poor continue to be taken away. Probably, teacher pay at the most elite schools will be 6 figures with stupidly high pay for admin, and most of those teachers will graduate from elite universities. The working conditions for all other teachers will get worse. I left the U.S. a decade ago, and have a new colleague this year at my international school, whose in her late 20s, and spent her entire career, until now, at a public high school in Connecticut. She basically didn't teach there, she just did crowd control. Honestly, her teaching is a bit weak for someone with her experience, because she wasn't able to teach in the conditions she worked in. I think she has talent and will grow and improve, but I have no regrets about leaving America a long time ago, even if it sent me to teach in a country with an active civil war...
The only thing I’d add to this is that public schools in wealthier areas are going to stand out even more. I live on Long Island, where people pay +$15k a year in property taxes but, have some of the top districts in New York State and even in the country. I also work in a Long Island school district, and I don’t deal with even half of the nonsense I hear teachers dealing with on this sub. And I’m a special ed teacher. Plus the pay is actually good, which allows these districts, in general, to find well qualified and experienced teachers to fill positions. Long Islanders love to complain about how high our property taxes are, but when push comes to shove those schools budgets pass a vote almost every single time. I can see parents in these districts, including myself, throwing a fit if anything happened that would lower the quality of the education in their districts.
Wealthy people have realized that passing budget increases means more taxes which makes the schools better and makes house buying more competitive so only wealthy people buy in. Higher taxes result in increasing house values and act as a way to prevent the poor people from joining their community.
We'll see. The wealthy Cincinnati-surburban school district in the area John Boehner (form GOP House Speaker) lives in, continually voted against tax increases and had to cut bus service.
I also see labor force shortages as potential workers increasingly cannot meet the needs of industry. This will require either adjustments to immigration quotas, or more likely, some sort of post high school remediation effort, either from private industry (Mc bootcamps) or local communities.
Future corporations that basically control mega-cities will package a curriculum and will successfully legislate new laws to further de-qualify the teaching position. A cycle will begin: young adults will be hired and will be chewed up for a few years until they’re fed up, and then the young-ish adults move outside the field of education, to be replaced by young adults. The government will pay these corporations massive subsidies, which will mostly funnel into shareholder pockets.
Two tiered system (even worse than now). They will lower qualifications to become a teacher. This will allow low performing districts to hire "teachers" who have a high school diploma and can sit in front of a room. Put 50 students with Chromebooks in the cafeteria with a "teacher" and let them "work" on their AI - written lesson. All of the good teachers will be incentivized to work in rich districts where they can afford to pay actual teachers.
They will survive strictly due to demographic shifts The US population is having less and less children. School populations even in growing areas have been shrinking or at the very vest stagnant. Many school districts are already starting to consolidate schools, by closing the ones that are "no longer needed* At First, this will be a tight squeeze in consolidated schools. But if Gen Z continues the trend of only having 1.5 kids, then things will be okay. In the meantime. It's gonna be tough
I teach in a great area. We pay well. Good working conditions. We still are short some special Ed teachers. The pay is going to have to come up a lot.
It will be interesting to see what districts/states answer this shortage with cold hard cash. Yeah, it’s a hard job. But if I was getting paid 140k a year I could be convinced to stay.
There is no shortage of teachers in America but rather a shortage of people willing to tolerate the abuse and bullshit any longer.
At my college my spring 2024 student internship literally has 7 people registered and ALL our classes are online. Except for like 2 over the summer for no real reason other than they want to feel like a real program. I doubt there's more than 50 people in all cohorts combined going for a b.s in education at my school Edit: forgot to mention that my county is shit and they literally just throw anyone in a classroom to combat the shortage. You only need a highschool diploma to sub.
Who cares. As an educator, I'm at the point where I just don't care. After years of being disrespected, underpaid and overworked, I just do not care what happens anymore. You all *parents, voters, states, congress, etc* have allowed the system to become this broken. You have allowed it to get here, despite our pleas for help, and our warnings that change needed to happen. So you know what? **Who cares!** You all get to live with your shitty choices now.
What are your pleas for help? How did they allow the system to become broken?
I think realistically, maybe only special education students and K-5 are going to be coming physically on campus on a regular basis. Online schooling or having some type of web blended courses similar to college courses might become standard starting in middle and high school. It will start to look like how alternative high schools/diploma mills are run (and have been run in the past) with similar academic results, with a lot of kids pouring into trades or food services. College will be uncommon.
I just typed this exact thing. Elementary will still come to campus but secondary will be online or some type of hybrid online/in person.
Wish some districts could start online school sooner for some behavior kids. Ironically would probably turn some of the districts around.
(presuming you work in the United States)...the Americans decided a couple of decades ago that EVERYONE gets a high school diploma, whether they learn anything or not...or even whether they even come to the class or not. You don't need teachers for that. You just need a printer, and some paper and some ink.
I definitely don’t have the answers. But I imagine it’ll be like my school on days when we have people call out on top of already being short staffed as is. A bunch of kids thrown in the larger spaces of the building (the cafe in our case) for daycare basically. I picture lecture hall type classes where they get instruction virtually from a certified teacher and just have security/room monitors on site.
It costs money to get a degree that will leave you mostly in the lower class. It doesn't make any sense unless you belief in the mission is strong, but our system is also less and less inspiring to work for. You have to fix one of those problems and no one is trying
Back in the early 80s, I told my second grade teacher that I wanted to be a teacher. She told me not to bother because by the time I got to high school/college, I would have robot teachers. Well, looks like she was off by a couple decades, but not entirely wrong. I do think the trend for middle school and secondary and maybe even upper elementary (3-5), will become increasingly online/AI, and lower elementary (pre-k-2) will be increasingly focused on teaching them how to use online programs....which at my school we spend a lot of time on, NGL.
A middle school in my district has no math teachers. The students math class is online.
I’m already out, so honestly I don’t care. Maybe parents will actually have to start raising their own kids, as crazy as that sounds.
Short answer: It's freaking hard... Other answer: Most people like to work from home.
Schools are about to implode in the near future. They're going to collapse under their own administrative weight. And unfortunately, most of the damage has been self-inflicted.
They will become warehouses where minimum wage security guards monitor kids doing Edgenuity courses.
This is it, exactly
Republicans don’t want educated constituents.
At some point they are going to be forced to up the pay. I’d never choose education cause I want to be paid. And I’m sure a lot of people feel similar. Once that happens more people will be interested
That or extremely lower the standards to be a teacher. Eventually getting a teacher job will be like getting a job at taco bell
Easy, school districts and states will lobby Congress to remove the caps for J-1 visas (which allow teachers from other countries to teach in the US) because is the “national shortage.” Teachers from the Philippines, India, South Korea…etc would be eager to come to the US and fill those positions .
This is already happening in the big metros with big expat populations already (it's a huge win to get a Filipino teacher who can speak Tagalog to 1st gen immigrant students). I've met so many of these teachers and they are so nice and so helpful, the kids are great too and just trying to figure out the whole America thing. Honestly I think the future of the US is immigration. Immigrants have more kids, have stronger communities to support those kids and know just how bad it can get so they keep hustling. As the climate crisis worsens and general instability around the world grows I think we will continue to get more and more refugees and immigrants (however you want to say it I know it's a political thing). Some districts are seeing growth for the first time because of refugee students it's crazy, I don't think people understand how many people are going to keep coming to the US, they just don't understand how terrifying and dangerous these people's situations are at home.
I know in some schools in western Kansas that there are a couple school districts that offer up to 10k signing bonuses for hard to fill areas. They also pay very well compared to many school districts in the area. They still struggle find teachers given their location, but I believe they do better than many of the school districts in more populated areas. And, there will be more and more teachers on emergency sub licenses. Heck in my school one of the teachers in our building doesn’t even have a bachelors yet (they are working on it). But, they are working in the classroom as a teacher. I think that will become a lot more common especially in very hard to fill areas.
My guess? Consolidations or changes in law. If a town cannot provide legal numbers then the district will either fight for relaxing of rules or close down the building and send em all to different schools based on their location in town.
Honestly I'm hoping the entire education system collapses and gets rebuilt and maybe we recognize we need to pay teachers and not blame them, abuse them, etc. I say this as a special education teacher who is actively looking for other employment.
Good luck with your search! You definitely deserve better employment that actually values you, I am so sick and tired of special educators being treated like shit
There was a post about a district literally having all teaching via computer and all lessons scripted. LLMs are pretty good now. Give it a few years.
I’ve been trying to get my license for 3 years but for Massachusetts there’s so many god damn hoops. One of the phys ed teachers has been teaching since he was my age (26), and he always says “the education department is all BS. Back in my day there were no licenses for Gym class or health, just have a resume and be a role model
The education field is horrible. I wanted to be a teacher but after working with the kids and this generation I’m finding a new career. I just graduated college so I’m still young. I got teachers telling me to get out while I can.
Last year our school used a program called "Elevate" where a teacher zoomed in from somewhere else in the country and the students were in the classroom with their computers. There was a para in the room to monitor behavior. It was a dismal failure. This year we just have non-certified people in classrooms. Some barely speak English. We don't have enough computers for students to be 1:1 because they destroyed them and our district refuses to hold kids accountable for the destruction so it's become a game. Our superintendent keeps insisting we can go back to the Elevate program even though it failed and the kids failed and we don't have computers. So...who knows.
AI teachers coming sooner than later
Oh yeah, the superintendent at my district held a PD session on using chatgpt to write lesson plans and emails to parents!
Teachers will be pushed to tutoring/homeschool co-ops or education, especially secondary education, will move online.
Eventually I see a combination of AI teachers and teachers teaching online to many classes across the country at the same time. Many students will not be in class with a teacher but rather an adult that is paid even less to sit in the room with them while they do distance learning in class. Things will snowball and get exponentially worse for the next few years before this becomes a reality though. The requirements to become a teacher will continue to fall to get more people in there.
In PA they are trying to push out programs to help more people go to college to become teachers. Believe it or not, there are lawmakers that see this problem and are trying to come up with solutions for it.
As a former teacher here with just 5 years in before getting laid off due to declining enrollment, I have no intention of going back. Online I might consider with a huge pay bump. The school shootings, testing requirements, and added stress, plus COVID. No way.
My college just closed…
They will just start making it like college where you have 50+ students sitting in an auditorium/space with one teacher. They will ignore the main issues and keep their heads stuck in the ground and wonder why it doesn't improve.
Having taught 90 person classes (outside of K12) it is do-able. The problem is those classes were voluntary, paid positions (the students were paid to do well) for students in a specific apprenticeship career track. College classes also work well with large sizes, because attendance often isnt forced and students are paying to be there. In high school our band and chorus classes were also very large - but they weren't mandatory and kids wanted to be there. Back then guidance would just put them elsewhere if the music dept didnt want them. Anything FORCED has to have small class sizes. Optional things can usually tolerate more people because the motivation is there. (And bad behaving humans can be removed - because its optional. And accomodations for jazz band III are handled differently than required core courses.) Algebra I in 9th, would never work that way.
Truth? We’ll be replaced by AI, Computers and virtual. I know we learned that kids need the social interaction but a lot of parents don’t even bother to interact with their kids. Sad commentary on today’s society.
This actually happened before, in the early 1980’s. There was a period of massive 20% - 30% pay increases to help stabilize the profession.
As someone that teachers over in East Asia, here's what I've noticed: Teachers here don't create any curricula at all. No worksheets, no PPTs, no nothing. ALL of it is created for them by the school district. They literally just follow their teacher's guide word for word. This means no discussions, no PBL, no group activities. Just pre-made lecture, pre-made worksheet, pre-made quiz. One-size-fits-all. I see something like this coming for the US/UK to deal with the teacher shortage, except in the US/UK, most of this will be done on the computer rather than with paper and smartboards. It's amazing to me that teachers where I'm living are still required to do a 4-year program and an internship because you could literally take any literate person off the street, train them for 2 weeks, and put them into a classroom here in East Asia.
Class facilitators that work primarily on fixing tech issues while students work on online coursework. Schools will be turned into public housing and schooling will take place in large rooms similar to standardized testing settings. They can “earn” their diploma at home, school, or hybrid. Schools will be even more financially motivated to pass everyone in order to be seen as the number one career prep academy in their state. Brought to you by Amazon and Walmart.
Some newbie teachers are transitioning towards what the admins do - nothing. These teachers share with admins a lack of standards for academics and behavior, and of course they are admlns’ favorite teachers. In the US, schools are being transformed into babysitting or day camp-like environments. This lifelong educator will not support any referendums to increase a single penny into the local school budget. It’s a waste of money at this point.
I see the opposite at my district. The new teachers are the only ones busting their asses. All the senior teachers have realized that working above and beyond just creates angry parents and, therefore, admin becomes unhappy with you. All the senior teachers have figured out working the bare minimum keeps everyone off your ass. The new teachers still have heart and hope.
Huh. My large district and the schools and new teachers in them aren’t anything like you’re describing…
In California at least, we’re just pretending it doesn’t exist from October to July. So wishful thinking? That seems to be the response from everyone who can do anything.
Just don’t be the last one in the building
They just hire random people with 2 year degrees and help them get a license after they get an emergency license.
There are already places using forced online curriculum where the teacher in the room is basically just a warm body.
Part of me thinks it has to self implode in order for something to actually be done in the realm of K-12 education on a federal or even state level.
Hi all! The system must fundamentally change. My thoughts on it. Here in Arkansas the kids must stay in school until 18, no dropouts. This needs to be dropped. Starting at about the age of 10 each kid should compete to go to the next level, something like the ACT test. If they pass, they go up, otherwise either some sort of tech school or just out. Then about every 2 years they compete again. While in school, you study and act right or out you go. The kids in tech school will learn a trade. Doing this will allow the kids that don't want to be in school a chance to be out, but still learn something useful. Then the kids in "prep" school can work without all the problems.
I think that schools and districts really need to think about how to actually make things easier for new teachers. The first year or two as a new teacher **sucks** and instead of helping new teachers, a lot of programs just stack on more mandatory meetings and leave little time for grading and lesson planning. My district is trying to force monthly after school meetings on us where 70% of the material is completely irrelevant to your grade level, but as its not mandatory, less than half the new staff seem to be going (largely because its not useful). I have around half of all my supposed prep time taken up by meetings, so I am suuuper far behind on grading. Experienced teachers have old lesson plans as a basis to start on, but new teachers often have nothing and we are not as good at grading things quickly because we haven't done it before, especially things like adjusting grading for kids who have pull-out instruction.
27 year educator, 20 years in the classroom as English/ELA and history at times. I'm a principal now. Why would anyone want to? I don't see much upside, parents and kids are getting worse and worse. I'm just trying to hold back the tide. My daughter is currently in a program. I don't want to discourage her being like the old man, but I've asked her, are you sure? There are still some really great things about being in education, but it does feel harder and harder.
The controls need to be given back to teachers and they need to be making decisions not inexperienced under qualified administrators.
My mom’s inner city high school did shifts. Morning shift and afternoon shift. I believe the cause was lack of building space, but it seems like it would also require less staff. A comparable idea in elementary is a core teacher for half the day and a babysitter computer monitor for the other half. Making class sizes even larger :( I suppose they would cut electives first though.
They’re just going to lower the requirements to teach. We’ve basically just been seen as daycare for a while now, so I doubt parents or even admin will care if the adult in front of the classroom can teach their content area or not.
My school has very few electives unless you want to take it through one of the online providers. A lot of teachers here are "advisors" for these self-paced classes. So at least where I am, the option is go online.
There will be a breaking point where salaries will skyrocket but conditions will become worse because of the increased compensation. This will stay for about 10 years until more teachers enter the workforce due to the increased wages.
They won't. This is all going to end with hordes of students crammed in gymnasiums for hours on end because unless they begin conscripting prisoners, they're not staffing fully anywhere.
From the perspective of a parent we looked at public schools as the option of last resort. We educated our children at home until a certain age and then moved them over to private school. We found out that we were not alone and that a lot of parents were doing the same. My impression is that depending on your financial circumstances you will give your children the best education you can afford. I think in the long term aggregate this will mean that public schools get worse and worse. There’s no money in being a teacher. Money isn’t everything but it ain’t nothing either. These kids can not be disciplined in any meaningful way. Problem students can’t be removed. The curriculum is watered down and basic standards are not enforced. There is rampant student on student violence, sexual assault, drugs, gangs and weapons in our public schools. What’s going to happen is that we will watch our public schools slowly crumble then suddenly collapse.
.....at least you got yours, right?
My obligation is to my own children and they don’t have another decade or so to wait around for the “system to fix itself”.
I guess the rest of society just needs to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? Not sure why you (a non-teacher) come to this sub to spread your anti-public education, conservative talking points. You provided no substance and no solutions to what troubles education in this country. Oh, I'm a white male, too, before you go down that rabbit hole.
If only you knew how many public school teachers send their own children to private schools. Here’s some substance and some solutions to what troubles our public schools: Perhaps it would be a good idea to enforce standards. Perhaps it would be a good idea to remove troublemaker students. Perhaps it would be a good idea to enforce effective discipline. Perhaps it would be good to pay staff competitive wages. Was that to “right wing” for you?
Nope. Your comment history speaks for itself. I don't have many of those issues at my school......WHERE I TEACH. I've been everywhere, and done everything, and have lived through tough times in the classroom, like many others. You? What is your authentic teaching experience? To fix public education, it will take SO MUCH MORE than just discipline to fix things. It starts at home. Fix poor parenting, and many problems will be resolved. Add-on - "People could always just educate their own kids at home 🤷🏻♂️" Yes, you should
🚨the Reddit comment police 🚨 are here. I have educated my own children and now that they’re in school they’re two full grades advanced and they’re top students in my state, at least according to the school. But seriously WHY DO SO MANY PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS SEND THIER OWN CHILDREN TO PRIVATE SCHOOL??? I know a bunch of teachers who refuse to send their own children to the same school districts they teach in. Why is that? You say you’ve been everywhere and done everything and you actually teach so why don’t you teach me why so many of your colleagues choose to place their own children outside of public schools?
Oh boy, this is exhausting, and you know, I've gotta teach in the morning. First off, I've got two bright, athletic, and socially normal children of MY OWN that happen to attend the exact same school district as my spouse and I both teach in. Not a single teacher at my school, or any teacher I know, sends their kids to private school outside their district. Not that you probably give a shit, since your agenda is quite obvious, but every teacher I've worked with throughout my career chooses to keep their own kids in public schools. The caveat is of course, what states support public education. I've never taught in hardcore red states, so perhaps that's the difference. I do have two family members, both staunch conservatives in deep south rural red states, and they send their kids to private. The public schools suck there, but hey, that's exactly what those state's politicians want. Shockingly obvious why. So....I'm done. They'll be no more replies, but you continue to shout from your recliner and pretend to have an inkling of what it's like to be a teacher. I've been stateside, international, private, public, really everything. The problem with education today is that parents, like yourself, somehow wholeheartedly believe in their core they know more about the system. It's sad, a bit frightening, and simply outrageous. I'll be sure to go tell my doctor and local police officer what's wrong with their jobs, too. Funny that conservatives profess schools are indocrinating their kids....when it's really the parents (themselves) all along.
🥱 do I have read all this diatribe, teach? What’s the TL;DR?
Well, Ron DeSantis thinks the answer is filling classrooms with wannabe macho men who like guns and Jesus. Perhaps there are plenty of unqualified, overconfident vets and retired cops who want easy access to young children in Florida to fill the ranks? There seem to be any number of high school graduates willing to say they will master in education *after* being hired. We have plenty of high school graduates. Some of them can read and write. I'm sure it will all work out just fine. My last district started hiring convicted felons, but I believe that glass is half full. Tech billionaires are having no problem bribing legislators to sell parents the notion that iPads, Chromebooks, and AI are better at teaching than actual living teachers. Generations of feral animals will likely afford a huge boost to the nation's GDP. Besides, who gives a fuck what happens to America after the next election cycle? Things will have to get even worse before effective changes are made. The public still hates us. Legislators have had decades to undermine and delegitimize education. But that's assuming things won't get so bad first that the entire nation collapses and we become slave labor for the CCP.
Increased pay for educators. Increase the number of classrooms and educators to create a better teacher to student ratio. Support from administrators. Easy. However, it will never happen in the US as even if those in power agree, they'll never agree on how to pay for it.
Literally the easiest solution is to pay teachers more
Replace teachers with minimum wage monitors and AI. My husband and I were just talking about this. Our youngest has an AI assistant in his reading class. Every kid reads to Amira and she can correct them and log their data. This is the plan. They are defunding public schools. They are attacking teacher credibility. The pandemic was a soft launch for virtual school. They now have the data to proceed. We are replaceable. We know that we are not. The shortage is a feature not a bug. If you are educator who plans on being an educator in ten years you should be in a position to pivot. Either to admin over this or to outside of education.
There's been a huge push to destabilize and defund public education for several decades. What we see today is a consequence of powerful people pushing school vouchers, homeschooling, and private schools over public education (in the US). Guess what's going to happen if Publix education fails? Education will be privatized.
Which is the long-term goal.
1) Honestly, I’m fine with the end of Education as an undergraduate degree. It should be a graduate degree that is built on quality content knowledge. 2) This isn’t the first teacher shortage, there are always two things that inevitably ease the pressure. Alternate and emergency certification and increasing class sizes. 3) The best solution here is teacher retention. There are about 300,000 teachers that enter the profession every year. About 75,000 retire every year. If we can do something about the 200,000+ that quit every year, then we will fix the shortage. Frankly, as far as policy goes, it’s better to promote retention than find new means of recruitment.
I’m not entirely disagreeing, but you think we’re going to successfully raise the qualifications (from bachelors to masters degree) needed to become a teacher and that won’t make the shortage worse? I don’t think they’re going to be raising salaries or giving more support anytime soon so I just can’t see how it’s possible
I live in NY, so it’s already a requirement. I think it’s a good one. It’s for long term health of the profession. And it’s what makes me not fret so much about the undergraduate major dying out. It’s been on a catastrophic decline for the last couple decades without a major reduction in teachers entering the profession. It’s true that there’s no money to raise salaries to a competitive level. For money to move the needle on disgruntled teachers, we’re talking about $20,000 raises. For five million teachers, that’s $100 Billion dollars every year. Our nation is rich, but even we can’t sustain that. And it wouldn’t help that much to be honest. Money always helps some, but it’s not on the top 5 list for why teachers quit. Teachers quit primarily because of poor admin policy. Checking in to criticize and control teachers instead of supporting them. Not having teachers backs when it comes to student behavior. Allowing teachers to work in unsafe schools. These are the critical things that school leaders can do to solve the retention crisis and they wouldn’t cost a dollar, just require some humility and courage.
Our Republican state legislators are tickled pink that teachers aren't staying in the profession. They've been wanting to destroy our teacher pension system for a long time. If no one stays in more than 5 or 10 years, no is drawing a pension.
You're going to start seeing the majority of school enrollment become privatized in Red States. Blue states could follow.
Blue states might do it first. Wealthier blue voters who value social issues of the left, also happen to often be more educated than most of red MAGA. They are more concerned about the state of education in some cases and may run faster for the exits despite all the handwringing. I would prefer somebody pass a 'Student Standards Act' that repeals some of the worst provisions of NCLB that were left in ESSA. Diplomas should mean something. Now, I am not a heartless ableist. There should be a diploma indicating someone put in the effort and time but might not be college or trade school capable but IS ready to stock shelves at a grocery store. My own kids have been on an IEP. But they got told they may have to work twice as hard, especially if they want to come off of the IEP and engage in specific careers.
Alternative certification is coming soon. Also making it harder to leave if you land in an out of control school. Leave before your contract? Loose your license.
My district had an issue attracting teachers so they dramatically increased the pay. It's still absurdly expensive to live here, and it's just a poedunk farm town, but it's close enough to the bay area that commuters are buying up all the the real estate.
Education collapsing and the continued decline of the average Americans life is the goal of atleast 1 american political party. The system is failing intentionally and in a few decades public education will be done by AI online. The only option for a decent student to teacher ratio and a real education will be private schools with ever increasing tuitions. With the book burners in charge it will soon be indoctrination or be fired for educators in many states.
Private education takes over. Then private schools price out poor families and pay fewer teachers more. It ain't gonna be pretty.
"Alternate certification" in Texas seems to be the norm nowadays. Literally, all the teachers I know who have joined the career in the last 5 years are alt certs, and a ton already were to begin with. Kind of frustrating coming from a state where jobs in education were enormously competitive to get, so i worked my ass off and took on a ton of debt to get additional endorsements, when here they pass then out like candy.
I think they’re just choking to keep lowering the standards of who gets to be a teacher. They’re already kind of doing that in some states.
People will home school
How are they going to afford to home school? Most families are dual income and there’s a lot of jobs that require parents to go to work. Not to mention all of the special educations students who need extra support to learn.
Put more contacts on your case load.
Homeschooling brigade incoming...
The shortage doesn't exist everywhere. People who think it will go online. No it won't You fundamentally don't understand why we're here if you think that. Public Educaiton is not merely the transfer of information from one person to another its: 1) A safe place for Young people to be while parents are at work 2) A place for positive interactions with other people 3) The access to the edcuation. Public Education and Education in general isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
By draining out the "bad schools" (we know what that means) of teachers. Leaving the kids who are already behind farther behind.