The Canaries are Dead and No One Wants to Go into the Mine

Coming out of grad school, I considered various options for where to begin my teaching career. I ended up working in my hometown of Tacoma, remaining there for thirteen years before moving overseas. But somewhere in the multiverse, there are alternate Nates that followed other paths. 

I completed my masters in 2006. The seminal news event of my two years in grad school was the failed government response to Hurricane Katrina (just nudging out our failures in Iraq). Millions of us watched as the citizens of New Orleans were abandoned by every level of government and left to fend for themselves in agony. The hurricane was a form of ethnic cleansing, wiping out entire mostly Black neighborhoods, replaced largely by real estate speculators and their AirBnBs. In some ways, it feels like we’ve collectively memory-holed the largely preventable deaths of nearly 2000 people. We must “never forget” 9-11, but it seems we never remember Katrina. 

The hurricane did more than destroy much of New Orleans. It reshaped  neighboring urban centers as people were forced to resettle: 84,000 evacuees to Atlanta; 50,000 to Baton Rouge; and a staggering 150,000 to Houston. In late 2005, enrollment in Houston area schools swelled as families resettled from NOLA. I have family in the area and Houston ISD flung a wide net trying to hire teachers to meet the soaring need. I was offered a job but ended up not taking it. I’ve always kept an eye on news and events in Houston ISD. It’s February 2023 and they currently have 282 unfilled positions.  

Another option I considered was moving to Nevada. Vegas’ population has soared in my lifetime, from 438,000 in 1980 to 2.8 million people today. The footprint of the area has grown to match (see video below). Vegas’ schools have struggled to keep pace but in 2006, before the housing collapse, they, like Houston, were casting a wide net.

Clark County was more of a possibility for me than anything. As with Houston, I’ve kept tabs. They have a MAGA/Sarah Palin school board member, ​​Katie Williams. She ridicules teachers, is hostile toward immigrant families, and is a Covid denier. It’s February 2023 and there are currently 1,079  teacher, counselor, and nurse openings in Vegas. 

Because schools are run by each state, as each state sees fit, data reporting on the number of unfilled positions nationwide vary. But at least forty states and territories are reporting teacher shortages this year (left) and the numbers are far more grave when you look at STEM, world languages, ELL, and teachers serving students with special needs (right). But it is more complicated than that. The shortages have local twists and permutations. States and districts with lower pay and states with so-called “right-to-work laws,” offering fewer job protections, unshockingly have it worse. More affluent communities (and states that permit unionization) are seeing fewer shortages, meaning low-income students and students in flyover country are more likely to have a revolving door of subs, combined classes, or severely limited course offerings

Left - an image from ABC news showing states, in red, facing a teacher shortage (spoiler: most of the map is red). Right - An image from Yahoo!: Data on school staffing shortages by position and the reasons for the shortage (Again, lots of red here indicating a lack of applicants).

There are no reinforcements in the pipeline - Enrollment in teacher prep programs dropped by ⅓ between 2010 and 2018. I promise you the pandemic made this situation worse, not better. During the period when the country shifted to online schooling, much of the country showed teachers their behinds, and people rightfully left the profession in droves. Worsening all of this, teaching is more complicated than it was in the past. I am not a “history teacher.” I teach a college-level US government course, another college-level course comparing the systems of government in the UK, Iran, Mexico, China, Nigeria, and Russia, and a blended ninth grade course: a mish-mash of macro econ, international studies, world geography, and post-WWII world history standards. My job description isn’t atypical. Unless we deeply narrow course options or swell already crowded classes, there will not be enough capable people willing to be subjected to the vicissitudes of teaching in many US schools.  

Over the last decade there’s been a push to get more students into STEM classes and higher-level classes in the Humanities. That’s cool and all but what happens when no one shows up to teach because they have far better options? It feels like we’re about to find out.   

What We Owe the Next Generation of Teachers

I was a fairly mediocre teacher when I first started. Sometimes I look back on my first few years and wonder why my students didn’t walk out on me. My old slides look atrocious; my handouts were too wordy; my instruction was completely teacher centered: me talking, me explaining, me doing some weird dance.

There were some long, sad, doubt-filled nights my first few years of teaching. I thought frequently about moving into law. For the first several years of my career, every spring, I would thumb through an LSAT prep book and browse law school catalogues. It wasn’t until my seventh year that I didn’t get that “ritual spring itch.” That’s when I knew I had hit my stride.

I am now eleven years in and I think I have things kind of figured out. In my classroom my students do most of the talking and a fair amount of the teaching. They tweet articles from the National Review and the Atlantic to me and to each other in the evenings. I have waves of students in college and they almost always report they felt prepared. I have sharpened my craft. I have grown and progressed.

But I wonder what might have been for me and for others in the career field? Roughly half of the teachers who started this fall will be gone from the career field in five years. Nearly ten percent will bounce before the year is up. For many of them, that’s for the best. Teaching isn’t for them or they aren’t especially good at communicating complex ideas or building relationships with students and their colleagues. But also in that 50% are some phenomenal educators who will never get a chance to hit their stride.

Teaching is hard. The early parts of our career are harder. Being a new teacher in a high-need school, without the appropriate supports is the hardest. It breaks strong, smart people, but it’s the most important work imaginable.

We know from research and I tell audiences every opportunity that I get that the number one in-school factor impacting student achievement is the effectiveness of the teacher in the classroom. The constant turnover of teachers, particularly at high-poverty schools, creates a revolving door that robs our neediest students. Year after year, they have earnest, good hearted, but green teachers who are still sorting things out. Our neediest students deserve our best; instead far too often they get whoever is available.

For the sake of their students, we owe new teachers meaningful supports:

• We owe our teacher candidates intentional placements with effective mentor teachers.
• We owe our new teachers effective, successful mentors who can support them in their professional growth.
• We owe our new teachers meaningful and timely feedback that gives them specific areas for improvement and growth.
• We owe our new teachers a salary commensurate with the gravity of their work.
• We owe our new teachers assignments that set them up for success—rather than failure.

I’m the teacher I am today largely because I stuck it out and learned from my early career failures and missteps. Too many who enter our ranks depart too soon. We owe them better, better preparation, better mentors, and better support.

This post originally appeared on the US Department of Education Homeroom Blog.