There's actually a teacher shortage. Now, you may be correct that there are "many areas" with "hundreds" of applicants for every teaching position (I'm only quoting for emphasis), but it certainly isn't in most areas.


FWIW, I'm going off of memory and the shortest of google searches, so please correct me if I'm mistaken.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

In my wife's school they have basically made everything wipe-able. She had flexible seating for 2nd graders since they each learn in differing methods. We had to go in and remove all of the seating she had put in place so they could go back to rows and desks, perfectly spaced. The open flexible seating concept she was using kept her classroom incidents to all time lows. Kids that have attention problems worked well when sitting in a position where they were more comfortable.

There are going to be a lot of changes and it will be taking one step forward and two steps back.

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TEAM HD
Each day is what you make of it so make it the best day possible.

see my earlier post. There are both excesses and shortages of teachers, because all schools are local. But pretty much any shortage of labor is usually just a simple case of an unwillingness to pay the right wages.

to the extent that communities pay reasonable salaries (most of the northeast for example) there is no shortage. to the extent that a some places have shitty pay, they can't find people.

Obviously COVID doesn't make teaching any more appealing, so the reality is, a lot of places will have even bigger shortages if they don't provide enough incentives. But with tens of millions out of work, there is a large labor supply. And no anyone off the street cannot walk in on day one and be a complete teacher, but to suggest there is no way to figure things out (train and mentor people) or that people who already have college degrees need to go back to school for five more years before we could let them near a classroom is a ridiculous position too.

I would say the odds of schools reopening in early/mid august, are about the same as a WTC race happening. There is so much confusion going on at the federal level, all the way down to the smallest county. Like someone said, a lot of teachers are not even in on this conversation right now, and it is just over a month away! We can see that major league sports have put their players in a bubble, test them every single day, they are adults, and they cannot control the spread. What the hell are a classroom of 5 to 15 year olds gonna do better than these guys?

And in the background the cases are spiking all around us, with no end in sight as far as I can see. And even when we do peak, it will level off for a very long time, and then a slow downward slide. Opening schools is going to supersize the virus, once again like the bars and other businesses that opened too early. But no doubt the idiots that fomented that paradigm, will just say that kids hardly get it, and they almost never get sick. You know, like now they are saying it is 20 to 40 year olds getting it, and nothing to see there either.

I know there are a lot of parents that are or will be back working, and school is the most elegant solution to the problem of what to do with them. But does anyone really think that every single school that opens, will not get positive cases almost immediately, and then what? Contact tracing only works when you have the numbers as close to 0 as possible, not 50k to 100k per day, and that multiplied by some big number that are not being captured.

And the real icing on this not happening, is the fact that trump is demanding it right now, along with his mini me in Florida. If there was ever a signal that schools are doomed to be closed again, this is it..And believe me, I want them back as bad as any of you, a 9 year old and twin 6 year olds are no picnic 27/7. But getting really sick, maybe dying or getting a lifelong ailment, well that is even less of a picnic, so I will find a way to make it work. Up until the time someone can get our country back and make it work again.

All good points.


Not to derail the thread, but as you know I used to be a HS teacher and can rant for hours about education. There are a lot of factors the lead to the teacher shortage, and pay isn't really one of them, though I certainly agree that pay will attract a lot more people (ie when I left, I more or less said, "I'm putting up with all of this crap for only $X a year." Had X been much higher, I might have stuck around).

I predicted the shortage about a decade before it happened, and truth be told, I pretty much suck at predicting the future, but I nailed that one. In a nutshell, the "fixes" for education that were put in place were increasing needless hoops that people would have to jump through to become teachers, make them give up a lot of their off time jumping through even more needless hoops, and micromanage their jobs. All without any increase in pay. They thought this was going to "make teachers better." What it ended up doing was making the job suck worse with no added benefits to the students (which = job satisfaction for the teachers) or the teachers (ie pay).

So in a nutshell, I'm with you on the point that they can fill those vacancies, but it'll be less about pay and more about just lowering the job requirements.



A bit of background if you're still reading: the final straw for me was moving to PA from MD and not having my certification transfer. I had to take more tests. One was a complete BS essay test where I had to guess what answers they wanted to hear even though the answers that they wanted were wrong. I passed that test with the minimum score as nothing in my college classes covered any of the information, and all of the answers were subjective. I later found out that there were books that you could buy from the same company that made the tests that pretty much gave you the answers to all of the questions. Some of the teachers' colleges taught directly out of these books.

So I was "this close" to failing a BS test (which was later subject to a lawsuit). Meanwhile I scored a 95% on the math test, only to find out that the passing score was 35%, and that half of the prospective math teachers fail it on the first try. Then, when I applied for certification, I found out that two tests that I had taken 5 years and one month earlier had expired by one month and despite having double the passing scores, I needed to take them again incase I forgot how to read and write in those 5.1 years.

To this day I can't even be a substitute teacher in PA because my GPA, which is largely engineering credits, is 0.01 points below the standard. I tried to explain to them that engineering classes are harder, and that the average GPAs are about .5 points lower than in education classes because engineering programs don't inflate the grades nearly as much, and I might have well been speaking a different language.

So I said fuck it! I don't need this shit for $32K a year.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

One of my kids has a snotty nose. Both of them were sent home for two weeks. Neither child has a cough or fever. The older one doesn’t even have the snotty nose. This is in July, show me a young kid who doesn’t have a snotty nose in fall/winter. My kids will probably be home more often than at school.

Some are planning a hybrid model where half of the students attend on Monday and Thursday, the other half on Tuesday and Friday. The days they don't attend are dedicated to "remote learning" AKA fuck off on TickTock all day.

If they really want remote learning to work, the teachers need to be in full class zoom meetings at least four hours per day. This shit where they meet one hour a week, give assignments and then turn them in at the end of the week is just independent study. The majority of kids can't do that responsibly.

But this would mean many more hours for teachers, and they just aren't going to do it. You can't fire them because of union and tenure laws. They could also just strike (unsafe working conditions, overtime not in their contracts, etc) and postpone things indefinitely.

It doesn't matter anyway, it's going to blow up bigly in the fall and teachers will start calling in, and they will have justification under the OSHA unsafe work environment laws if there is active infection in the district (and there will be).

I think we'll have about 6 month of carnage and then 3 or 4 vaccines will be approved and faculty and students will be required to take one or not be able to attend.

Our school is small so that probably works in our favor during this time.

The school has purchased some kind of sanitizing diffuser. The way I understand it the janitors simply spray the whole room, not wipe every surface. I have an aide and she has a 6 month old baby so you can bet we will be wiping regardless.

I should meet your wife. Same exact situation for me - teach 2nd grade, took all my flexible seating home and brought in desks. I had to remove all the extra shelves, reading corner, group tables etc to make room for the desks to be spaced apart. Even then the best I can do is 3 1/2 - 4 feet. Thank goodness I have a 14 year old boy to help me move all of this stuff back and forth.

Other issues I have tried to plan for that relate to decreasing the spread of germs (I'm sure no one really cares and will not actually read all of this but it's making me feel better to type it all out this morning for some reason):

I have divided all supplies into individual sets for each child.

I am hanging paper trays with zip ties under their chairs because there is not enough room for them to store all of this in these tiny desks but I had to remove all extra shelves to make room for the desks spaced apart so there is no extra room to store anything. I do not happen to have 20 paper trays so I will have to go buy more.

I have used Velcro to attach boxes of tissues to the side of the desks so they aren't all traveling around the room to the same spot for tissues.

I have attached a hook with a plastic grocery sack next to the tissue box because they will need a spot to throw the tissue away.

I bought them each a small pencil sharpener and travel sized bottles to fill with hand sanitizer to keep at their desk.

I have cataloged my entire classroom library onto an app so students can pick out books by looking through my library on the app instead of crowding at the bookshelf. I will probably pay the $100 fee upgrade to utilize electronic check out features of this app.

My salary is $39,000 a year. My sister and I are primary caretakers for my 79 year old mother. Local people are constantly complaining about the students being required to wear masks. Social distancing and wearing masks is not a priority for a lot of people where I live. It's just NOT a good situation from any side you look at it.

The thought of quitting has definitely crossed my mind.

We were joking that masks for little kids should be called snot pockets. They need tear offs on the inside like the motocross guys wear on their goggles for mud. Any 1st grade classroom I’ve seen is just a mess of snotty kids for most of the winter.

It was really interesting to read all of the modifications you are making. It’s so clear you care about your students. Thank you!

Every time I am at a loss for words to explain what a clueless doofus you are, I will refer back to this comment. The bubble you grew up in is not representative of the rest of the country. Ignorance truly is bliss.

It was a statement of fact. There are many school districts with comparable pay. It's just a giant fucking bubble then, right?

The plural of anecdote is not data.

Toggle between the options in the graphic in this article. If your high school's average salary is $110k it's an aberration - in Illinois and even more so nationally.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/...altrysxr4-story.html

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek

I'm in central IL and don't even make $40,000 a year.

Can't get to article. I realize the school districts I live in are at the top end, why do you think I chose to move here and pay an obscene amount in property taxes (which is also at the top end)? Hint it isn't spelled skool. But it also is not a complete outlier. There are a lot of school districts that pay really well. Some pay a lot less. That's how averages work.

Which is the point. You're in a bubble. Some school districts pay the rates you're using as support for your view that teachers are reasonably well paid. Some pay a lot less. The latter vastly outnumber the former. So yes, when you take an average, your argument falls apart.

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"The starting CPS teacher salary of $52,958 is the highest for unit school districts in Illinois. Just five Illinois districts out-pay CPS in starting salary, according to data from the Illinois State Board of Education, and they are all high school districts in wealthy suburbs: Glenbrook, Maine Township, Evanston, Lyons and New Trier [guessing one of these bubbles is you?]. When adjusted for cost of living, the starting salary at CPS is also higher than those at the country’s other large public school districts in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Miami, according to data compiled by the National Council on Teacher Quality."

"The midcareer salary for CPS teachers with 10 years of experience and a master’s degree is $82,630, considerably higher than in suburban unit districts such as Aurora-based Indian Prairie, which pays $67,329, and Plainfield District 202, which pays $55,833. Adjusted for cost of living, CPS teachers in this category earn roughly $10,000 more than teachers in New York, almost $20,000 more than teachers in Los Angeles and around $30,000 more than teachers in Miami, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality data."

"There are about 19,700 full-time employees of CPS who are identified as teachers in their job title, including regular teachers, bilingual teachers, special education teachers, speech pathologist teachers and citywide teachers. Of that group, the average salary is $78,211 and the average benefit cost is $27,146, according to a Tribune analysis of CPS employee data."

"By comparison, in Clark County, Nevada, home to the country’s fifth-largest school district with enrollment of around 325,000, median household income is $57,076. Teachers there earn a starting salary of $41,863 and top out at $93,018. The average teacher salary is $60,000, and the average benefit cost is $26,000, a district spokesman said."

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek

Seriously, I was doing a lesson about COVID and the spread of germs right before the shut down happened. While I was in the middle of the lesson a student picked up her folder and wiped her nose with it. Funniest part was the tissue box was on a shelf right in front of her!

And your cost of living relatively speaking is higher or lower than here?

For sure, I was actually just going to add that comment.

Google "Average teacher pay in Chicago" and "Average teacher pay in Illinois". Both will show that they are in the $60k range.

Please quit digging.

I guess Coward Twump has answered your Q. Schools that don't reopen in September will lose federal funding.

No need to protect children from a hoax.

https://www.politico.com/...deral-funding-352311

You do realize that when you mention the cost of living in relation to teacher salaries, your "well paid" argument falls apart even more?

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TEAM HD
Each day is what you make of it so make it the best day possible.

What argument am I making? That teachers earn middle class wages?

Literally 98% of the high schools in Illinois have an average teacher salary below 100k. But since 1% have a salary of 110k, we have to concede to windy that high school teachers are well paid, because 2% are.

Your missing a big fact. Their salary is for about 9 months.

So comparing them purely to other professions on annual salary is not quite apples to apples.

But that further supports the comment that they are paid well. (Not pro-athlete, attorney, accountant, doctor, but definitely very good)

And then add in the tutoring they do in the summer on a "cash basis" and its even better.