Sen. Doug Jones: Teacher shortage is 'very complicated'

[TexasTowelie]

Sen. Doug Jones heard from educators on Saturday afternoon about the multiple ways Alabama’s teacher shortage is causing problems and what might be done to improve it.

Jones said the teacher shortage problem here and nationwide is “very complicated,” and there are multiple things communities need to consider in addressing the problem.

“Teachers are really one of the backbones of society,” Jones said in opening remarks to around 50 people at the University of Montevallo. “We’ve got a shortage not just of teachers,” he added, but also the problem that there are 1,700 uncertified teachers in Alabama’s classrooms.

There is a long-standing, chronic teacher shortage in areas like math, science, special education and foreign language, Birmingham Education Foundation’s J.W. Carpenter said. Increasingly, he said, the shortage is extending to teachers of English learners, too.

Read more: https://www.al.com/news/2019/08/sen-doug-jones-teacher-shortage-is-very-complicated.html

[msongs]

1. well they could double the salaries for a start. supply and demand, right? nt

[riversedge]

2. there's a "much thinner pool from which to choose."..........Fewer folks going into teaching

to start with. Complicated indeed!


.................Selma City Schools Superintendent Dr. Avis Williams said those aren’t the only areas with shortages. “We have a difficult time attracting and retaining elementary teachers now,” she said. And with fewer people going into the profession of teaching, she added, there’s a “much thinner pool from which to choose.”

Tanesha Childs is in her second year of teaching art in a Birmingham City school. From her viewpoint, the problem is teacher retention. During her first year of teaching, Childs’ students repeatedly asked if she would be back this year. “They’re used to teachers not coming back,” Childs said.

Childs said the two fifth-grade classrooms at her school don’t have full-time teachers ⁠— only long-term substitutes.

Williams said when she started in Selma two years ago, none of their seventh-grade teachers were certified.

[lark]

3. They pay their teachers basically nothing, not that damn complicated.

They also let uncertified teachers teach - reason #2.

Why is he acting like this is such a mystery?

[Backseat Driver]

4. So much BS - it's not complicated at all

Nationwide - TPTB (GOP across the nation) have worked hard to reduce teachers' salaries and eliminate their unions; they disrespect a natural inclination of teachers to be political activists against political hacks' backward positions of anything that might result in kids growing up being capable of following the money (math), forming reasonable hypotheses and determining fact from mythology (science), having respect for the potential in persons with disabilities, physical and mental (special ed), and most importantly holding leadership's imbecilic ideations of their absolute white superiority (introductions to foreign language). Learning the foreign languages of peoples of other cultures and race might enable conversations with "them" and who knows what may ensue from that - mixed marriages, loss of evangelical religious participation, learning what can be done to protect every environment from the healthy body and mind, to reducing dependence on fossil fuels, chemical toxins that pollute, deforestation, and the joys of killing endangered species with important roles to play in the global ecosystems (Yay the hunt on both people and big game, self-defense, yay guns!). GASP!

Not well versed in skills, kids won't buck established systems of hate and ignorance. Some get bored; some give up; some lack the discipline to succeed. In short, keep the kids very dumb and supervise their minds at home and then reinforce that inadequate learning at school, the better to promote authoritarian injustices in the voting booth when they emerge from the public educational systems. Actually, even colleges have been lowering standards of prerequisite learning because professors find students not up to college-level basics; many skate by into educational degrees - Hah! That's okay, though, because colleges can add more remedial classes at high classroom hour cost and drop more advanced learning experiences.

The complications are the rackets with which the GOP have embraced

What passionate and effective educator would want to work under those terms?