For most California school districts, the teacher shortage is something that will happen in the not-too-distant future unless things improve. For others, it has already begun.
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| Isidora Martinez-McAfee teaches in a jam-packed Richmond classroom. |
In the West Contra Costa Unified School District, for example, conditions include crowded classrooms, teachers “subbing” during their prep period, chronic use of substitute teachers, a lack of consistency for students that exacerbates behavior problems, and veteran teachers experiencing burnout at ever-faster rates.
Conditions are so bad that new teachers often flee — and those being recruited are frightened away. Last year, the district recruited approximately 65 teachers from other countries to fill in.
A report from the Center for Teacher Quality (CTQ) titled “A Possible Dream” suggests such problems are commonplace in schools with teacher shortages. In fact, it says, “In some schools, the shortages are so severe that classes are staffed by a revolving door of long-term substitutes.”
“We know that teacher shortages are a significant contributor to poor student achievement,” notes report author Ken Futernick, a California Faculty Association member. “Academic and social environment suffers from a lack of consistency and coherence because new arrivals are unfamiliar with the school’s policies, its curriculum and instructional practices — even its students.”
The teacher shortage in West Contra Costa County is definitely hurting student achievement, says United Teachers of Richmond President Gail Mendes.
“We can’t get enough subs in our high schools and middle schools,” she says. “The district has asked many teachers to ‘period sub,’ which means they work every day during their prep period. This totally wears out teachers. And those who get burned out are much more likely to think about going elsewhere.”
The district relies heavily upon interns and “pre-interns,” but sometimes — even with support — these teachers-in-training are unprepared for the harsh realities of teaching solo in an urban setting, says Mendes, a former nun. Some trainees had only a summer of teacher boot camp before being thrown into extremely challenging situations.
“These teachers are working without a safety net,” worries Mendes.
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| Jose Irizarry |
Jose Irizarry, an intern working on his teaching credential, finds that teaching at Richmond High School can, at times, be frustrating.
He says he has not been given “clear directives.” And he started off the year with no supplies, put in an order and had still received none in early December.
“You have to ask your own questions and seek your own knowledge because there is no structured place to get it,” says Irizarry.
Other brand-new teachers have not fared as well as Irizarry. A few quit abruptly, say UTR members at the site.
Richmond High School is among the sites most heavily impacted by the shortage. It had 39 classes missing teachers at the beginning of the school year. Administrators stepped in to help teach some classes, and literacy and math coaches were reassigned as classroom teachers with just a few days’ notice.
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| Beverly Durham, a resource teacher at Richmond High School, has had to step in to teach ELD when a sub was unable to maintain discipline. |
Beverly Durham, an English language development (ELD) resource teacher, was one of them. She finds it difficult to do both jobs. Without a full-time resource teacher, English language learners (ELL) are not always grouped at the appropriate level, meaning those who speak little or no English can be found in the same classes as those who are close to proficiency.
“There’s no time to make sure that everyone is in the right place,” says Durham. “We should be making sure that all kids are at the right level in the right classes with the right materials and that everyone is complying with this.”
Durham took over an ELD class taught by a substitute who was unable to maintain discipline. “It took me a month just to get students to sit in rows facing forward,” she sighs. Durham will continue to teach that particular class because she worries that adjusting to yet another teacher would be too traumatic for students. However, she would like the district to hire an ELD teacher so she can go back to evaluating students.
With classes often overcrowded, the resulting chaos has made it more difficult to control disruptive students, say teachers at the short-staffed school.
Students say that they are being shortchanged. “I had a teacher quit my biology class in the second week, and then we had a sub for a month before getting a teacher who didn’t know where to start,” says Leonel Rojero, 15. “It feels like we’ve thrown away a few months.”
The high school principal has received numerous letters from nervous juniors and seniors expressing concern that the substitute teachers are not providing them with the education they need to pass the California High School Exit Exam, according to the Contra Costa Times.
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| Carlos Taboada |
Teacher turnover is higher than usual this year, says site rep Carlos Taboada, an ELL social science teacher. “About 12 teachers have left to find other jobs. They don’t want to be here anymore. They don’t like the working conditions or the way they are treated.”
When the superintendent asked Mendes why the district can’t seem to attract and retain good teachers, she told him, “Because we pay them crap and treat them like crap once they get here.”
“He was a little surprised, because I don’t usually talk like that,” says Mendes.
“But the reality is that we can’t get and retain good teachers. And we need to do something about that.”
In nearby Oakland, which also has a huge teacher shortage, the district hired about 300 new teachers this year and still had vacancies in hard-to-fill areas such as math, science and special education.
According to Oakland Education Association President Betty Olsen Jones, many schools have had to increase class size due to the shortage of teachers, forcing schools to forfeit state class-size-reduction money available to K-3 classes that have a ratio of 20 students to each teacher. Some kindergarten classes now have as many as 28 students. Some upper-grade elementary classes have 38 students. More combination classes have been formed to deal with the situation, some with as many as three grade levels.
The teacher shortage hurts students who already face enormous challenges from living in low socioeconomic, high-crime neighborhoods, says Olsen Jones. “It’s tough when, from the beginning, some kids don’t have permanent teachers and have a revolving door of subs. It’s totally frustrating for the children. And when teachers are hired, it’s hard for them, because they are teaching children who have had total instability.”
Nikita Gibbs, a teacher at Lockwood Elementary School, has seen this firsthand. Until the end of October, one fifth-grade class had a substitute who was well-liked. When a certificated teacher was found for the class, the students were resentful and chaotic after the substitute’s removal. “The kids are all against the new teacher and she doesn’t know what to do. Some of these kids were sent to me for misbehaving because they need a stern hand. It’s a shame, because kids need consistency.”
In Bakersfield, the shortage has district officials so alarmed that they made an emergency request to the state for assistance, says Carol Reichert, president of the Bakersfield City School District Teachers Association.
“They can’t find people who want to teach. Our district is short substitutes on a daily basis. The kids in those rooms get farmed out to other teachers’ classrooms. That makes two groups of kids losers — the ones being babysat by another teacher, and the teacher’s regular kids who are getting 50 percent less attention because their teacher is doing crowd control with other classroom’s kids.
“It’s not right and it’s not fair to our students.”
