No Big Surprise

No Big Surprise

I receive three emails daily from The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, a professional organization to which I belong.  Each of the three has a variety of headlines with brief explanations from the press each day concerning the world of Education.  Sometimes, I forward the link to myself for reference at a later date.  Sometimes, I read them and that's it. Today's list of briefs included a reference to something in USA Today.  The report covered research findings conducted by the newspaper and IPSOS Reid concerning the intentions of teachers this fall. The research poll found that fully 20% of teachers in the U. S. do not plan to return to their classrooms this fall.  Now, mind you, it is important to remember that there is always a turnover of teachers throughout the U. S., documented and researched, based upon burn out and the intention just to try something new.  But this is something completely different.  One statistic that hit home especially considering my last couple of postings in here, is that almost 2/3's of the  teachers surveyed said they were walking away because they were being required to work far more than they did before the pandemic forced schools to shut down.  While CNN and MSNBC and all the other news outlets are focussing on the problems of restarting the economy and the unintended consequences of so much unemployment and little desire to spend right now, no one as far as I know has been talking about the teaching profession and what the move back to school is going to mean for our profession. There are some of us who know that teaching online properly requires many more hours than teaching to a whole class and now there is talk of blended learning, meaning some face-to-face and some online.  There is also the question of how to social distance properly in schools once they open and how to ensure students are not crammed together.  It is all well and good to talk about teaching outdoors sometimes, but the bottom line is that there will not be enough space nor enough teachers to do what has to be done in the fall to make parents sure their children will be safe. Now to that issue comes the fact that there will not be enough bodies to provide coverage to every class all the time.  There are often articles referred to in the same compendium of headlines that I referred to  above documenting the lack of teachers in some states and offering enticements like salary boosts, free loans for house, or for professional development and so on.  The list goes on and on. It seems to be that the U. S. is heading into shoals that most don't even foresee yet.  Now the proverbial shit will hit the fan for all the inattention paid to the underlying problems with schooling in  the U. S..  It is frightening to think of where it will all end.  America will no longer be the beacon on the shining hill and its moment in the sun will quickly pass.  Too bad among all the problems they face is the lack of leadership, from the top on down.