If teaching is such a cake job then why is there such a high shortage?

Is the expression not cake walk?

I mean, I can for the U.S.:

Indoctrinating students into saying the pledge of allegiance every day, despite some of them having zero path to citizenship for themselves or their parents.

How to actually read (Lucy Calkins and balanced literacy created a generation of students unable to decode).

Pre-Columbian civilizations and the utterly dumbfounded notion that groups such as the Maya and Aztec "disappeared" (particularly odd as you teach Guatemalan Maya students in your class).

Columbus and his discovery of the U.S., followed by the Pilgrims and early settlers and the complete lack of any sort of discussion of the utter decimation of indigenous groups.

The adulation of "heroes" like Andrew Jackson and other heinously awful historical figures (particularly pertinent for my state as we have a whole bunch of terrible people that are essentially idolized.

The complete lack of pertinent discussion and in-depth understanding of the fight for civil rights, particularly in the south (where we are) and the ongoing denial of basic sustenance and medical care (ex: students missing school because their teeth hurt so much and they have no access to dental care).

I mean, this took about 4 minutes to type up. I could keep going for the next hour with pretty much no difficulty.

Oh, that's what you take from that.

Speaks volumes.

There more broadly are shortages in jobs that require people to be in person most of the time. Remote work or at least some remote work is demanded now.

I just got an ad for the Army (I’m not eligible) for a $50k sign-on bonus. It’s amazing how much money people will pass up just to sit on their rears these days.

Teaching is tough but a pretty decent gif if you can get it in a safe area. But you do have to be in person.

I'm a teacher. I like my job, but I teach high school. I could not handle elementary, which my wife teaches.

I really don't know what accounts for any teacher shortages. We have positions at my school that have been unfilled for years, using long-term substitutes. My district has relatively low pay compared to other schools in the area, so that likely contributes. I suspect many teachers also feel they are not respected, but I would imagine many occupations feel that way.

Teaching can be stressful, but so can most other jobs. There is take-home work many days, but that's true in other jobs as well. I know quite a few teachers who have quit to go into the private sector and are much happier, but I wouldn't be. The time off means there is always something to look forward to, I am passionate about the content I teach, and it is a job where one can really feel they are making a difference. I have former students contact me all the time for life advice, help on college assignments, or just to catch up. I earn extra income in the summers and throughout the year by adjuncting at local community colleges. All in all, it could be much worse.

It’s time for more focus on “logic and reasoning” and “fact v. fiction” in the curricula in schools. Or/and more offerings in practical skills and survival techniques.

So you work from 7:45 until 3:30, which is less than 8 hours. You work 7 hours if you don't include lunch (no corporate job includes lunch in your 8 hours). You also get every holiday off, an extended winter break, spring break, and summer break. You work at most 7 hours per day for 180 days of the week.

You can't count your coaching because that's something extra you do. Also most people have children so you can't whine about that either.

If you pulled that crap trying to support a wife or family in CA, you’d be a divorce statistic, or you already are. Are you like 25 yrs old?

I've said this for years, our approach to education needs to be completely rethought. The pandemic really exposed the failures and fissures within the system.

It's 2022 and we are still approaching public education like it's 1922.

I agree. But the needs of students of in different states, communities and schools are very different. Politics has gotten in the way of change and I'm afraid this will continue.

Are you familiar with Sir Ken Robinson? His videos and books address this but his ideas have rarely been implemented. I was fortunate to work with a principal who tried to implement as much as he could in a bureaucratic school system.

Yes, what's needed in Chicago is different than Austin, and that is very different than Atlanta, or Miami or Hazard Ky. The needs are very localized, but too many of our policies are nationalized.

But also when I say approach I mean like E V E R Y T H I N G needs to be re-examined to see if it is really affective or is this just the way we've always done it.

-length of the school day.

-length of the school year.

-are grades even important? (aren't most things really just Pass/ Fail, you know it or you don't?)

-are grade levels (1st grade, 2nd grade...) even relevant?

-who responds to the ol' "sage on a stage" style learning and who needs more visual or hands on?

-true real relevant vocational learning and training

-single sex class rooms- is there something to that?

That's just off the top of my head.

oh and my the thing that really gets people going.

I am against mandatory attendance for secondary education. If "school aint your thang" then immediately enroll those kids in GED prep classes and move them on.

Military recruiting, especially the Army, has a self-made problem compounded by the dwindling eligible population. Recruits are either too fat or too dumb to enlist. Body fat is up and ASVAB scores are down.

They have a prep program now, started at the 11th hour, a fat camp and dumb camp, to help improve those recruits who are close to making the cut off.

As usual, wars are good for recruitment, peacetime is bad for recruitment.

Alan

Do you realize how many teaching positions there are in a district? I work in a medium size district with 15 elementary schools, 5 middle schools, 3 high schools, 2 charter schools, and 4 alternative resource schools. That’s 29 schools. If we ever had only 20 open positions, we would like be at a >99% fill rate of teaching positions. You must live in the least teacher-shortage district in the country.

News flash: societies conquer one another. Best way to avoid being conquered in turn is to set incentives for achievement and self-reliance — and to export that culture. Dressing professionally is one tiny part of that puzzle. A far more important part is to stop multiculturalism. It’s all well and good to enjoy different types of food and art. But when your society lacks the ability to communicate with itself due to language barriers and has diverse behavioral standards then it will crumble and be conquered.

To your civil rights point, the situation is far worse than you might imagine. Government schools and handout / welfare programs have been corrupting poor kids disproportionately for as long as they have existed. There is a strong positive relationship between government ‘services’ and cultural rot. The standard chorus is ‘send more money and the problems will go away’. But they only get worse. And now they can’t even attract enough sane / competent people to ‘teach’ in their propaganda camps... Is it ‘racist’ to plug poor and black people into the matrix and destroy their communities? Who knows. But using community resources to create backwards incentives sure is cruel and destructive.

What are you, some kind of mathemagician? Numbers don’t matter when you have a narrative to push. Didn’t you get the memo? Consult your colleagues in ‘social studies’ right away.

Or better yet, skip the GED / prep classes and let folks come up with job-training solutions organically.

Yes, life is harder in communist CA. That’s why people are leaving in droves. All of the businesses up my street were permanently ended by government mandate and five families have moved out of my block. The government schools were shut for so long to (by union mandate) that many people with kids just left for greener pastures. The smart and able ones took their kids out of the government system altogether.