When Teacher Burnout Becomes Teacher Dropout: Addressing Our Teacher Shortage Issue
Last month we broke down burnout – the lack of resources and support paired with time pressure and challenging relationships that lead to emotional exhaustion, reduced performance, and frustration that’s plaguing teachers and infusing through their classrooms into the students. This month, we follow burnout and its effects on an entire profession downstream and find ourselves facing a very serious problem – national teacher retention, or rather the lack thereof.
According to an article from U.S. News and World Report, we are facing the first major teacher shortage since the 1990s. Public school enrollment is increasing (expect 3 million more students in the next 10 years) and our older teachers have been retiring. The biggest contributor to this issue? Teacher attrition.
(From The Teacher Shortage Crisis is Here, U.S. News & World Report)
Each year 8% of our nation’s teachers leave the profession. If we could lower this by half, the levels of attrition that countries like Finland and Singapore experience, it could solve the entire teacher shortage problem. As this reality soaks in, it begs the question:
How can we better support our teachers?
The answer that may first come to mind —“pay them better”— is totally valid, but research shows that’s not enough. According to the Learning Policy Institute (LPI), the state of Maryland has one of the highest starting salaries and just-higher-than-average wage competitiveness for teachers, but still faces some of the highest rates of teachers planning to leave the profession. When you look at the working conditions ratings you can see why. Classroom autonomy, collegiality with school, testing-related job insecurity, and administrative support are worse in Maryland than the US average. (Check out their awesome interactive data map to see the full scope of their research)
For Maryland, this results in a teacher attractiveness rating of 2.18 out of 5. Only eight other states in our country share a score in a range this low. Not only does this rating make it hard to retain teachers, it also makes it hard to get them to enter the profession in the first place. In fact, enrollment in teacher preparation programs fell 35% between 2009 and 2014. So as more and more of our unsatisfied teachers move onto other careers, we end up hiring uncertified teachers to fill their classrooms. More often than not, those uncertified teachers are placed in low-income, high minority schools, exacerbating the difficulties these schools already often faced with a scarcity of resources.
There has been an increased focus on recruiting more and more new teachers into the profession and even lowering the standards to become a teacher, but if they follow in the footsteps of their recent predecessors and leave shortly thereafter, then haven’t we have just put a Band-Aid on a recurring wound, only to tear it off again come next school year?
So back to the question of better supporting our teachers. The LPI laid out a pretty comprehensive plan. Reducing the cost to enter the profession in the first place is a starting point, followed up with quality mentoring for those new to the profession. Addressing hiring practices and personnel management are also mentioned, as is increasing compensation. As The Whole Teacher grows and supports more teachers and schools, we are quickly finding that teachers are craving these services and types of supports.
The strategy that the LPI recommends that resonates most with The Whole Teacher is improving teachers’ working conditions. The Whole Teacher is bringing support services into the immediate vicinity of the school building, removing barriers teachers too often face in taking care of themselves. With regular yoga practice, nutrition counseling, and financial planning services embedded into their workdays our educators are nurtured as whole people first, who can then go on to thrive as great teachers.
Alica Diehl
Alica Diehl is a kitchen experimentalist, food nerd, and healthy lifestyle crusader. She appreciates how health varies from person to person, so she explores and shares many different means of healthy eating, exercise, and mental/emotional wellness. She began her career as a HealthCorps Coordinator at Patterson High School in Baltimore, and is now the Community Programs Coordinator at the Institute for Integrative Health. Throughout her career she has developed several programs and events to inspire and motivate others to foster their own personal thriving. Alica is currently pursuing a Culinary Nutrition Expert certification to expand her knowledge and illuminate new opportunities. She personally believes in the importance of local food systems and seasonal eating, the support of community, and the power of food in building relationships.
