https://ew.edweek.org/nxtbooks/epe/ew_08302023/index.php#/p/8

“State policymakers and district leaders are working to rebuild the teacher pipeline through long-term solutions, including by creating pathways to licensing for paraprofessionals, career-changers, and interested high school students.”

For the past several years, schools have had a tough time finding qualified teachers to hire and have offered financial incentives and other perks. This year is no exception. Some districts have gotten creative in their efforts to fill each classroom with a teacher before school started. An Aug. 30 Education Week article lists five ways that helped address the problem.

They are the following:

1. Using virtual instruction: This involves live streaming teachers to classrooms with paraprofessionals there to support the teacher.
2. Bringing in teachers from overseas: This year, a Missouri school district hired 40 teachers from the Philippines, Nicaragua, Jamaica, India, and Cameroon.
3. Applying for emergency licenses: This means hiring people who have a bachelor’s degree and pass a background check. They haven’t necessarily passed a content-knowledge exam or had any formal training in education.
4. Bringing teachers out of retirement: Retired teachers can come back and “double dip” by earning a salary while keeping their retirement benefits.
5. Increasing class size. A Loudoun County, Va. and Waukesha, Wis. school districts have bumped up class sizes when they couldn’t fill teacher vacancies.

My district used some of these methods this August. Administrators brought out of retirement at least one person–me–and increased the number of students in Spanish classes when they couldn’t replace a colleague who had left the profession to work in medical billing. They also required teachers to teach a sixth class—instead of the normal workload of five—for which educators received extra compensation.

These solutions work in the short term, but we need more permanent fixes that can be counted on to last years and involve hiring trained teachers for in-person instruction. How can we encourage more young people to major in education in college and retain veteran teachers who are leaving due to burn out and stress? With changes in policy, pay and procedures at educational institutions, I believe teaching could become an attractive profession to many who hadn’t seriously considered it before.