They say you learn something new everyday, but what would happen if one day there was no one left to teach anything?

Teaching, while frequently overlooked, is essential in order to maintain a fruitful society. All around the country, millions of students patiently sit in front of knowledgeable teachers who hold the vital information necessary for students to flourish.

However, today we face a major crisis that’s already underway. Since March of 2020 there’s been an utter lack of educators.  According to the National Education Association (NEA), public education job openings outpace the number of hired educators by 100,000 since Jun 1st, 2022. The NEA builds on this explaining that teachers around the country are quitting at such a drastic rate that it accounts for more departures than any other factor.

Beyond this, we don’t see educator jobs coming back on the rise anytime soon. More research by the NEA shows that 62% of parents when asked if they wanted their child to take up teaching in the public schools as a career said no. In addition to this, Data USA shows an approximately 3% decline in teaching degrees awarded, which according to the New York Times is the lowest it’s ever been since 1973.

Many people have tried to point fingers as to what exactly has caused the rapid decline. While common answers include the pandemic or lack of interest, labor unions like the Ohio Education Association think much of this decline is caused by the teacher wage gap.

Now while all of this is very pressing, is any of this actually drawing up concerns to our teachers? To find out more I reached out to AP Language and Composition teacher, Mrs. Bolles to get her opinion.

Cardinal Nation: This graph depicts the teacher hire and demand gap, what do you think about this graph?

Mrs. Bolles: I see the first graph reports data only through 2022. Is this unsettling trend continuing? If so, I am not surprised by the graph. Teaching, although a noble calling and rewarding profession, is tough. The planning, teaching, grading, and classroom management teachers must do each day is hard enough, but the other demands that are constantly being placed on teachers make the job extra pressure-filled and exhausting.

Cardinal Nation: This is another graph, but it shows the number of people who pursue teaching versus those who actually complete their degree.

Mrs. Bolles: In regards to the second graph, it records the data through 2020 only. While the data is disheartening, I am not qualified to speak on why students do not complete their teaching degrees.

Cardinal Nation: We have very few young teachers in our school. Do you think this is a result of the teacher shortage or just that we have fewer job opportunities here in our district?

Mrs. Bolles:I believe the Mentor School District is fiscally responsible, so they work very hard to keep the teacher-to-student ratio at a level that benefits both students and teachers without wasting taxpayer dollars. The vast majority of new hires have been younger teachers.

Cardinal Nation: The state of Ohio requires that elective teachers have a bachelor’s degree for the niche that they teach. Some people, most of whom are not professionals in education, think that teachers for elective courses shouldn’t need their bachelor’s for the job. What is your opinion on this? Additionally, do you think that we are working towards this with the rate of the teacher shortage?

Mrs. Bolles: I strongly believe that elective teachers must be highly qualified and this includes having a bachelor’s degree in the area they desire to teach. If a teacher shortage reduces the pool of qualified candidates, then exceptions could be made as long as a candidate was willing to pursue a bachelor’s degree in the niche field.

Cardinal Nation: If a student was pursuing teaching, what would you recommend to them in order to become a teacher?

Mrs. Bolles: I recommend that would-be teachers shadow instructors who teach in the grade level they want to pursue before committing to the major.

Cardinal Nation: What do you like most about your job as a teacher? What other than your favorite part as a teacher would you say is a benefit of being a teacher?

Mrs. Bolles: I enjoy working with students and watching them grow into skilled thinkers, readers, and writers. I also have a passion for my subject area, so I enjoy the creativity of planning lessons.

Mrs. Bolles also brought up something I thought of large significance in comparison to everything else:

Cardinal Nation: How do you think we should encourage more students to pursue teaching? Alternatively do you think we shouldn’t interfere?

Mrs. Bolles: When I was getting my teaching certificate 25 years ago, there was a teacher shortage. The federal government launched a national television campaign to inspire people to become teachers. Such a campaign was appropriate, but I don’t think teachers should try to recruit students to the profession. Having a passion or calling for teaching will more than likely lead to success and longevity in the profession, so teachers should not unduly influence students to become the teachers of tomorrow.

********************************************

Out of curiosity we searched and this is what we found about what teacher shortages looked like 25 years ago. An article from October of 1999 shows that the teacher shortage came as a result of people using the career as a “fallback option.” John Merrow explained that “The fact remains that our nation’s 1,300 schools and colleges of education already produce more than enough teachers. But about 30 percent of those newly minted teachers don’t go into classrooms. Some never intended to; they were majoring in education because it’s an easy way to get a degree or to have a ‘fallback’ option. Others found they couldn’t get teaching jobs in their hometowns, and so they found other work; that is, staying home was the goal, not becoming a teacher.”

Additionally they explained another factor, much like today, was that teachers weren’t staying on that career path. It was reported that in cities the teacher retention rate was only 50%.

The idea of teaching as a fallback option was very pressing to me, so to find out we got some insight from Mentor’s own students in middle school and high school. I expected going into this that I’d find a similar pattern where students only considered the career as a fallback option however, the results interestingly didn’t reflect findings from 1999.

This chart represents responses from one Shore middle school class. Students were asked if they wanted to respond to a question regarding teaching. Following which they were asked “Would you ever consider becoming a teacher of any kind?” A staggering 13% of students said they would consider becoming a teacher. Additionally, 80.8% of students quickly said they would never even consider becoming a teacher.  Though what was more shocking was that the lowest response was those who said maybe. Comparing this case study to the general results in 1999 24% less said maybe. This could be of concern because it means that those who in the past stuck to the career are now fewer.

We also asked high school students to see if maybe when students are closer to choosing a major their opinions vary more. For high schoolers the responses were divided by gender to see if this yields any new information.

This comes from a random sample of 27 female students from the school during mods 13-14 lunch. To try and limit bias mostly only one student from a table of friends was asked as they likely had similar opinions. The other response in this chart was because a student would consider becoming a teacher but not in the traditional sense rather they wanted to be more of an instructor for a certain niche. What could be of concern from this data is that 8% more students said they wouldn’t be a teacher. So if on a large scale these numbers stayed the same it could negatively impact the number of future teachers we’ll have.

Using the same method here’s the responses from male students.  One thing to note is that this is from a slightly smaller population of only 24 students to represent the proportion of male to females because typically there’s more females than males in any given population. What was interesting from these results is that more males said they would be a teacher. So if these responses held true on a larger scale it means we might see a switch from primarily female teachers to more male teachers. However, it could also mean that maybe Mentor schools just have a unique influence on male students which makes them more inclined to like teaching. Unfortunately the same fact does hold true here that an overwhelming majority of students don’t want to be teachers.

Another finding from asking students at Mentor this question was some reasons as to why they wouldn’t be teachers. While not every student from the graphs answered those who did typically link it to not enjoying being around kids or being unhappy with the standard pay. The second reason is a direct reflection of the first graph in this article which shows that in comparison to a variety of different paying jobs teaching is one of the lowest.

Overall, the teacher shortage is definitely still in action and it should be treated as such. If you personally are considering becoming a teacher there’s lots of resources for you to test the water so don’t be afraid to look into it. For more information about the teacher shortage check out resources from the National Education Association and other U.S. and Ohio based educational websites.