Looking at the EdSurge K-12 stories that resonated most with readers last year, many of them relate in some way to the teacher shortage being felt across the country. Not just the numbers, although there was a lot of interest in the data.
While there was still discussion about how to attract new teachers, there was also an increase in conversations about retaining teachers, including from teachers speaking candidly about what would make them stay or why they left.
Many of these stories delve into the heart of the teaching turnover: the years of overwhelm, loss of autonomy, and desire for some aspect of work-life balance that culminate in a breaking point.
These are people who felt that being educators was their calling, but the sacrifices they were asked to make (especially in light of the stress of the pandemic) made staying in their teaching jobs seem impossible.
Here are the most popular K-12 stories of 2023.
10. A student and a teacher try to figure out why group work is, well, terrible.
By Nadia Tamez-Robledo
This one hits close to home for me and it's exciting to see that the theme of group work resonated with so many readers. The student in this headline is me, a humble grad student who truly had some of the worst group project experiences of my life over the past three years. The teacher was Jen Manly, who had many titles but also many ideas about how educators can make group work better (and dare I say, enjoyable) for participants.
9. My students deserve a classroom. Instead, I teach them in a hallway.
By Katerra Billy
This describes the frustration of a special education teacher who lacks one of the most basic elements of a classroom: as the headline says, a classroom. Billy carefully lays out all the reasons why teaching in a hallway is detrimental to the progress of his students. There was a surprising element that goes back to the most basic part of a room, and that is that without it, his students felt vulnerable and uncomfortable showing their learning process to their classmates. Classrooms provide a safe space to perhaps make mistakes or at least not expose the nature of your academic needs. There is no clear solution to closing his essay, because his school has not devised one.
8. 'Gen Z Teach History' is a viral TikTok series that combines learning and humor
By Nadia Tamez-Robledo
In the midst of stressful situations and… should I just say it? – Depressing news about the teaching profession, Lauren Cella has carved out a charming corner of the Internet where she puts her own humorous spin on history lectures. “Gen Z Teaches History” is her millennial vision of how today’s high schoolers might one day deliver their own classroom lectures, with youth slang (what’s “rizz?”) and Taylor Swift references to spare. . Millions of people have watched her offer lighthearted (but historically accurate) accounts of classic topics like King Henry VIII's marital strife or the real story behind Cinco de Mayo. Cella says she's just trying to do what the history teachers she admires have done, which is make distant events relatable.
7. An idea to prevent teachers from quitting: ending the shortage of teaching time
By Nadia Tamez-Robledo
When Texas formed a task force to make recommendations on how to attract and retain teachers in the state, one of the solutions they came up with seemed surprisingly simple: respect their time. One study shows that under the burden of their regular job duties, grading, meetings, and more, teachers work an average of 54 hours per week. But addressing the causes of this time shortage can be a complicated matter.
6. The idea of a minimum wage for teachers is gaining traction in Congress. Where has this worked?
By Emily Tate Sullivan
Since lawmakers were interested in attracting and keeping teachers in the classrooms, the idea of establishing a national minimum wage of $60,000 gained some support. How does this work in regions where it has already been adopted? Houston ISD in Texas already offers a minimum salary of $61,500 and its data shows teacher turnover is slowing. Raising teacher pay over the next decade is part of Maryland's plan to become one of the best educational regions in the world. One official said the process of getting every district in the state to a $60,000 minimum salary is in part to recognize the experience educators bring, the hard work their jobs entail and the importance of their role to the state.
5. When a small fraction of teachers submit the majority of school disciplinary referrals
By Nadia Tamez-Robledo
Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, gained an exceptionally detailed look at student discipline data from one school district in the state, and it led to some surprising discoveries. Most strikingly, about 5 percent of teachers were responsible for a huge number of office disciplinary referrals. This small group of teachers doubled the rate of sending black students to the main office for discipline compared to their white peers. The data revealed other findings about the grade level, experience level, and races of these “primary referents.” Researchers and the school district hope to use the data to understand and provide professional development to this group of teachers, who issue 46 or more office referrals in a school year.
4. Teaching was my dream. Now I wonder if this is stunting my other passions.
By Patricio Harris II
The best teachers, Harris describes in this essay, are multidimensional. They pursue their passions outside of the classroom and are better for it. So Harris followed in her footsteps as a professor who is also a podcaster, writer and speaker. But education is rigid, she writes, and demands all of the teachers' time and energy. How can teachers do their best in a profession that seems designed to exhaust them?
3. They left teaching in search of a better life. They found him?
By Emily Tate Sullivan
What do a mortgage loan officer, an instructional designer, and a recruiter have in common? They are former teachers who left the profession because it had become, in a word, unsustainable. Not only the workload but also the salary and the cost to your well-being. While most of the people highlighted in this article said they would return to teaching if the work environment improved, there is no denying that their quality of life is simply better now. Not just salary increases and the ability to go home at 5 pm every day of the week. One former educator says he heard more “thank yous” in the first six or seven months of his new job than in his entire four years of teaching.
2. These states have the most “underqualified” teachers stepping in to fill vacant positions.
By Nadia Tamez-Robledo
Tapping into the conversation about teacher shortages, this article looks at nationwide hotspots where schools are filling positions with “underqualified” instructors: those who have provisional or emergency certifications to teach, or teachers assigned to classes outside their area of specialization. Just as teacher shortages differ by state, researchers at Kansas State University found that rates of “underqualified” teachers vary widely depending on the staffing challenges each region faces. Tuan D. Nguyen, a professor, offered solutions that included more than just hiring. Rather, he says schools also need a combination of better salaries, more respect for the profession and less turnover in classrooms.
1. What is lost when a teacher leaves the school?
By Tracy Edwards
With more than 20 years of classroom teaching experience, Tracy Edwards has spent more than a little time thinking about the causes of teacher turnover. In this essay, she explains how a teacher's resignation has ripple effects that go far beyond simply staffing a classroom. It is an absence felt by students, colleagues and families who have children in a school. That's because, as Edwards explains, teachers do much more than lecture and grade papers to make sure a student does well. It is the relationships they cultivate with the aforementioned groups that make the educational ecosystem work. Edwards also offers solutions for educational leaders to consider if they want to keep their schools' teachers from heading for the door.
