Questions to Consider
- Carr draws on a variety of sources to support his argument, including statistics on teacher shortages, teachers’ experiences, and his own opinions on the issue. How does Carr integrate his research and these different types of evidence into his essay?
- How would you describe Carr’s organizational pattern in this essay? What elements in how he organized his argument and ideas were helpful for you as a reader? Were there any places in his essay that you had difficulty following?
- Carr discusses several different suggestions from his research into what can be done to solve the teacher shortage problem. Which one seems to be the most effective and why? What is the benefit of his argument for more than one solution or solutions with multiple suggestions?
A Note From the Instructor – Cody Norris
Ben’s essay is a perfect example of recognizing exigency. His rhetorical analysis focused on an event in his high school community that caused controversy within his community that also reflected national tensions. Through the process of drafting topic proposals, Ben thought critically about the issues his teachers, principals, and the students are continuing to face, and again found a way to capture how a national problem, the teacher shortage, could be handled within his local community. Ben researched diligently and strove to incorporate multiple types of sources to build his ethos and make his essay enjoyable to read, in addition to being timely and relevant.
A Childhood With No Teachers?
“What do you want to be someday?”
This is a question that we would ask each other in elementary school. We’d have a little circle of joy as we shared dreams of becoming astronauts, engineers, doctors, or the President of the United States. As we got older, we honed our answers to be a little more specific; we wanted to be physicians, electricians, legislators, and so on and so forth. Many of us agreed on one thing, as we would declare, “I’d hate to be a teacher!”—usually right in front of our teacher. We all laughed as we predicted that teachers weren’t going to exist once we all graduated from college, because who would want to be a teacher? The pay is low and the student debt is high; it’d be such a waste to be a teacher. To us, being a teacher was a joke.
It was a big joke for us Little Miami schoolers at the time, but then it actually started to come true. When we were just sophomores, and before COVID even hit Ohio, we lost three different English teachers and had to employ substitutes or temporary teachers to make sure that the students in that class had a supervisor. COVID made it even worse in the following years. Many teachers who taught Advanced Placement classes had to start teaching low-level courses to accommodate the influx of new students. There were even a few time periods when staffing was so low that we had to close down. For students, that meant an extension on Christmas break, but for teachers, it meant a massive amount of stress. Even when the school was open, it wasn’t uncommon for the auditorium to be shared by several classes that didn’t have a substitute teacher. All of this coincided with a world-wide pandemic. Because the effects of the pandemic are still present today, Little Miami schools need to use federal funding and reallocate money to raise teacher salaries and invest in programs such as mental health resources that improve working conditions for teachers and lower attrition.
Unfortunately, Little Miami is far from the only district in America with this predicament, and the issue itself has deep, underlying roots that go back far in time. Although the COVID pandemic has played a large role in the more recent surge of struggles, teachers haven’t had it great for many years now, and this is not a novel problem. An easy place to see an immediate problem has been in teacher wages, or lack thereof. Over the past decade, the National Education Association has kept track of the national average for starting teacher salaries. Their findings are nothing short of pitiful. In 2009–2010, the average starting salary was a measly $34,629. Perhaps even more sad is the national average for the 2019–2020 school year, which was only $41,163, constituting a 19.3% increase with an average gain of 1.6% per year (Walker). This increase certainly doesn’t guarantee a comfortable living standard, especially if you’re trying to supply for the needs of a family and not just yourself. This reality is only made worse by the fact that this is the starting salary for people who have just graduated college with much debt. It’s an incredibly unappealing work-reward ratio, and it’s certainly dissuading people from even considering becoming a teacher. Evidence of this declining interest can be seen among college applicants and students. As cited by Matt Barnum, National Reporter for the Chalkbeat outlet, a “Texas study found that in 2010, 13% of college applicants expressed interest in teaching; by 2020, that number had dropped to 7%” (Barnum). Continuing to examine pre-COVID statistics reveals once again that this is nothing new; interest in teaching is plummeting as inflation and an increasingly competitive market demand citizens to have ever-increasing wages to stay financially afloat. These moderate increases in starting salary are going to continue to bottleneck public schools’ ability to find new teachers or workers who are willing to enter into the profession, which has been a challenge for a decade now.
The COVID pandemic primarily exacerbated the challenges that public schools were facing. The height of the COVID pandemic was detrimental to all of America, as people struggled to find jobs, maintain healthy social lives while self-isolating, and avoid catching and spreading the virus. The pandemic was uniquely challenging for teachers, as their already stressful jobs are incredibly important and irreplaceable, so they had no choice but to adjust and drastically shift how they went about teaching in challenging and stressful trials. In fact, 84% of teachers and staff reported having a lower morale in schools than before the COVID pandemic, and one-third of teachers went as far as to say that the pandemic has resulted in a higher chance that they may stop teaching or make them aim for an earlier retirement (Rosenberg and Anderson 1). The stress caused by the pandemic has only amplified the already existing stress and exhaustion that the profession of teaching causes.
Unfortunately, the pandemic had disproportionate negative effects on certain demographics, namely Black teachers and female workers, which has worsened the shortage even further. An academic journal examining teacher dissatisfaction during the pandemic recorded that Non-Hispanic Black teachers who “reported that they did not have the opportunity to provide input [about whether or not to open or close the school]” were about two and a half times more likely to display increased intention of leaving compared to non-Hispanic White teachers in the same situation. They also found that female workers who were similarly dissatisfied with their lack of influence in policy applications were 78% more likely to demonstrate higher intentions of leaving than male counterparts (Gillani et al.). The lack of agency sparked by the circumstances surrounding the pandemic caused teachers to become increasingly unhappy, which will naturally lead to a loss of teachers in schools.
The teaching profession is also uniquely harmed by the pandemic’s effect on female workers. The U.S. Census Current Population Survey stated that women made up around 56% of the population leaving the workforce. This statistic is particularly problematic for the teaching profession, as about 75% of all American public school teachers are female. It’s believed that this disproportionate effect on female workers stemmed from there being many working women who were also mothers that needed to quit in order to take care of the children at home (Rosenberg & Anderson 6). As such, despite all professions suffering during the pandemic, schools that were struggling to find teachers had been uniquely exploited by the pandemic’s effect on working women and Black teachers.
In order to combat these issues, Little Miami as well as many other schools around the nation need to take action to ensure that teaching as a profession has long-term sustainability. Therefore, they must invest in programs that prioritize helping teachers in these trying times, such as raising teacher salaries. Despite its simplicity, raising teacher salaries is a strategy that’s already being implemented in other schools around the nation and has had many benefits that might not immediately be apparent when thinking about a simple salary raise. In El Dorado, Akransas, legislation was passed that raised teacher salaries and focused on addressing salaries of new teachers. Ashlee Curtis, a teacher at El Dorado High School, accentuated that this bill was particularly important for them because she knew that a lot of her coworkers weren’t just teachers; they had to work other jobs to make ends meet (Walker). This raise provides two major benefits: teachers can spend all of their time focusing on the education of their students without worrying about another job, and the increase in teacher salaries makes teaching a much more attractive career option for people pursuing higher education. A raised salary will also help prevent attrition, which is especially important as the experience of veteran teachers will be critical in helping students catch up with the learning that they missed out on due to the pandemic (Griffin et al.).
The Ohio Department of Education has taken action on the matter in support of long-term investment and has even offered ideas and policies that Ohio schools should work on. The Department has stipulated that “[l]ocal education agencies are required to submit plans for the use of ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Programs) APR (American Rescue Plan) funds to [them]” (“Addressing Teacher and Staff Shortages”). They emphasize the importance of attracting new teachers as well as using strategies for retaining veteran teachers, listing teacher and staff compensation, working conditions, and enhanced recruitment practices as areas of priority that schools need to look into for long-term sustainability. However, Ohio has also emphasized that these funds are temporary, and schools will not always have this surplus amount of money. Given this fact, Little Miami needs to reallocate funding when the COVID relief funds run out. This reallocation of funds needs to prioritize teachers and staff to maintain the improvements granted by the government funding and further prevent attrition in the teaching profession in the future.
Funds shouldn’t just be utilized for teacher salaries, and Little Miami should also use funding to invest in programs and policies that promote mental health wellness. They should guarantee that teachers have access to mental health resources and should implement policies that give teachers time off, so they can have periods of rest. Some examples of these policies include a plan period and more vacation dates to help give teachers a chance to rest during stressful times. Teacher satisfaction surveys should be given to get personalized information on challenges teachers face so that the allocation of funds can be optimized. Policies that give teachers more agency, such as more opportunities to provide feedback on how to implement COVID policies or safety regulations, would be quite helpful as well, as lack of agency has correlated with higher intentions of leaving the profession.
There are a plethora of misconceptions and misunderstandings surrounding the teacher shortage, with the most prevalent being the belief that the teacher shortage doesn’t exist or is being overdramatized. This belief mainly stems from two separate facts: the teacher shortage is a product of many years of build up, and teacher turnover rates didn’t significantly increase during the pandemic. As established earlier, the struggles of teachers in the public school system have been known and recognized for many years now, so many people state that the shortage isn’t any new concern and shouldn’t be purported as this massive issue. Studies have found that teacher turnover during the pandemic stayed the same or even decreased compared to previous years (Barnum). At face value, this is compelling evidence that the shortage is a hoax and that it’s being blown out of proportion. In reality, this conclusion doesn’t account for why this behavior was observed nor the future implications that it may have. Though a surprise to some at first, it was suspected that turnover rates would drop because “historically, when unemployment rises, teachers (like most workers) are less likely to leave their jobs” (Rosenberg and Anderson 9). Even though teachers were struggling greatly, unemployment was rampant, meaning that by leaving their jobs, teachers risked the chance of being unemployed during a time when many people were unable to find work. Once the world can resume its pre-pandemic normalities, teachers may gain the opportunity to find work that’s less stressful or that offers a larger paycheck. Given that they already struggle so much and those struggles have worsened during the pandemic, there’s strong reason to believe that a teacher exodus could occur in the coming years. It’s imperative that action is taken now so as to avoid regretting the potential consequences of inaction later on.
There have been other popular strategies that schools around the nation have been using to combat the teacher shortage, but to varying degrees of success. One area of investment has been in online education resources for teachers to utilize. For example, schools going “1-to-1,” or providing each student with a technological device for their educational use, was something that some schools had been planning for a long time but didn’t fully employ until COVID made it a necessity to adopt. These practices have helped add a lot of flexibility to education, especially when students are quarantined and must stay at home (Lake). Although there are noteworthy benefits to the adoption of technology, there have been notable negative effects on teachers. As cited in an original research article, “…some teachers’ stress and anxiety increased within the first 2 months of the pandemic due to novel technology adoption” (Gillani et al.). It’s true that there are certainly many benefits to implementing technology in the classroom, some of which can be very helpful for teachers, but forcing teachers to rework their teaching strategies with no alternative option is naturally going to induce intense stress and unhappiness for teachers. As such, it’s a good idea for schools to continue investing in technology and encouraging teachers to use technology, but only with the understanding that teachers should ultimately decide how exactly they want to implement it for their classes. Schools need to keep the option available without compromising a teacher’s ability to run their own classes.
Another solution that’s been employed is hiring substitute teachers. It’s a natural solution that needed to be used during the height of the pandemic, but it must be noted that this is not a sustainable, long-term solution. In the 2020–2021 school year, Little Miami spent around $215,000 on substitute teaching, which is rather staggering (Mitchell). The district can’t do that every year from a monetary standpoint, so it’s necessary to look to long-term solutions. Again, substitutes have been a necessity for the school, but the district needs to be increasingly more cautious when spending more and more on substitutes. Not only is this expensive, but it harms long-term solutions as it degrades “building the prestige of the [teaching] profession, resulting in increased attrition and greater shortages” (Giffin et al.). For the immediate future, local schools need to use emergency funds to make sure that schools have an appropriate number of advisors to monitor all the students safely, but state governments are going to need to start planning on how to utilize funds to achieve future-oriented goals instead of band-aid fixes.
The teacher shortage has been a problem for decades now. Increasing demands on teachers to help support their students physically, emotionally, and mentally, while also expecting them to be near perfect in their conduct, has made the job miserable for many people who were perhaps passionate about teaching at one point. Teachers, however, are not replaceable. There may be some now who can teach students, but in a few decades, when the next generation of kids is going to go to school, they may not have a teacher in the room to greet them and help them in their developmental journeys. The nation needs to dedicate resources to helping this issue, or we risk having a nation that’s not built on solid education, which is a staple for the proper functioning of our democracy. Many students may have opportunities stripped away from them if they can’t access a quality education at a young age, which will have drastic impacts on mental health and economic success in the future. As such, schools like Little Miami must start using funds to increase teacher salaries and invest in programs that ensure that current teachers stay engaged with the job, while also helping new teachers find a footing in the public education system.
Works Cited
“Addressing Teacher and Staff Shortages with Esser and ARP Funds.” Ohio Department of Education, https://education.
ohio.gov/Topics/Teaching/Addressing-Teacher-and-Staff
-Shortages-with-ESSER.
Barnum, Matt. “Is There a National Teacher Shortage? Here’s What We Know and Don’t Know.” Chalkbeat, Chalkbeat, 11 Aug. 2022, https://www.chalkbeat.org/2022/8/11/23300684/teacher-
shortage-national-schools-covid.
Giffin, Jessica, et al. “Generating Solutions to COVID-Specific Educator Shortages: A Synthesis of Insights From a Cross-State Collaborative.” Comprehensive Center Network, Aug. 2021, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED615878.pdf.
Gillani, Amreen, et al. “Teachers’ Dissatisfaction during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Factors Contributing to a Desire to Leave the Profession.” Frontiers, Frontiers, 1 Jan. 1AD, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.940718/full.
Lake, Robin. “‘Public Education Will Never Be the Same’: How COVID-19 Forced School District Leaders to Innovate on the Fly.” Center on Reinventing Public Education, Feb. 2021, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED614144.pdf.
Mitchell, Madeline. “Urgent Need for Substitute Teachers in Southwest Ohio, Northern Kentucky: Enquirer Survey.” Cincinnati.com/The Enquirer, Cincinnati Enquirer, 8 Nov. 2021, https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2021/11/07/urgent-need-substitute-teachers-cincinnati-area-survey-shows/6108710001/.
Rosenberg, David, and Tara Anderson. “Teacher Turnover Before, During, & After COVID.” Education Resource Strategies, Apr. 2021, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED614496.pdf.
Walker, Tim. “Teacher Pay Rises Modestly: ‘Now Isn’t the Time to Rest’.” NEA, https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/teacher-pay-rises-modestly-now-isnt-time-rest#:~:text=The%20National%20Education%20Association%20estimates,2.5%20percent%20over%202018%2D19.
Dear Reader,
As a writer, this has potentially been the largest and most comprehensive research paper that I’ve ever done. I can think of two other research projects that I did in high school that maybe come close, but in terms of the raw amount of information that I went through and synthesized, this is almost definitely the largest. I didn’t try anything revolutionary for my normal standards on this essay; I feel like it’s written fairly traditionally and honestly. I was maybe a little colloquial in certain phrases, especially at the beginning and end, but the rest of the paper is relatively straightforward. This essay was a long process that I needed to do a lot of reflecting on. Choosing one or two potential solutions to really be “my solution” took me a long time, and I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to go with until I started writing the paper. I really wanted to avoid just saying “increase the teacher’s salaries,” but research everywhere proves over and over that it’s basically the bare minimum and a necessity at this point. Even then, I still think there were at least a few other ideas that I strongly supported that don’t make the essay too boring to read. The consideration of other solutions is probably the most interesting part of the essay, as they’re not necessarily bad solutions, but they just happen to come with small shortcomings that ultimately made me consider them as “opposing perspectives.”
The feedback from my peers and instructor helped me a lot when it came to making this draft make sense to readers. It took me quite a few tries to really word things in a way that I felt satisfied with, and hearing other people comment on my paper helped reveal a lot of the areas that needed the most adjustments. The praise I got from them was honestly really encouraging as well and helped build up my motivation to do the best that I could for this paper.
This assignment was challenging because of the sheer amount of information that I was working with. I believe that I cite all eight of the sources that I had at least once in the essay, because I wanted to consider as much research as possible. Overcoming these challenges took a lot of motivation (which has been kind of hard to come by as we approach the end of the semester), but my interest in the topic, as well as feedback from my peers on top of support and flexibility from my instructor, helped me get through it all. I know that I had to collaborate a lot of stuff to get this project to stick together, and I hope that the effort shows.
I wish I could’ve supplied some groundbreaking idea to fix the whole teacher shortage or that I could come up with some awesome, unthought-of solution, but this essay taught me to be honest with myself. The numbers and logic are there, even if they aren’t the most spectacular and convoluted spectacles to see. But by the end of the paper, I hope that I built my ethos up enough via my broad spectrum of sources that I mention and use in the essay.
The answer that I thought of way back when I first started this argument ended up being the focal point of my final answer, but at least now I can say that I’ve actually dived deep into the matter and say with confidence that that answer wasn’t really all that bad. I’ve got a bunch of research to back it up. Nonetheless, I think this was solid practice to help me utilize a lot of information at once to make a cohesive and solid argument. My argument itself is, again, not the craziest and most complex one that someone would ever see, but it helped me get a better hold on how to make sense while still considering a plethora of perspectives. Being a biology major and going into the STEM field, I know that synthesizing a lot of information to make solid and logical arguments is going to be invaluable in my future careers, so I’m glad that I made it through this whole project and I’d say that I’m pretty happy with the outcome.
Writer’s Reflection
Dear Reader,
As a writer, this has potentially been the largest and most comprehensive research paper that I’ve ever done. I can think of two other research projects that I did in high school that maybe come close, but in terms of the raw amount of information that I went through and synthesized, this is almost definitely the largest. I didn’t try anything revolutionary for my normal standards on this essay; I feel like it’s written fairly traditionally and honestly. I was maybe a little colloquial in certain phrases, especially at the beginning and end, but the rest of the paper is relatively straightforward. This essay was a long process that I needed to do a lot of reflecting on. Choosing one or two potential solutions to really be “my solution” took me a long time, and I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to go with until I started writing the paper. I really wanted to avoid just saying “increase the teacher’s salaries,” but research everywhere proves over and over that it’s basically the bare minimum and a necessity at this point. Even then, I still think there were at least a few other ideas that I strongly supported that don’t make the essay too boring to read. The consideration of other solutions is probably the most interesting part of the essay, as they’re not necessarily bad solutions, but they just happen to come with small shortcomings that ultimately made me consider them as “opposing perspectives.”
The feedback from my peers and instructor helped me a lot when it came to making this draft make sense to readers. It took me quite a few tries to really word things in a way that I felt satisfied with, and hearing other people comment on my paper helped reveal a lot of the areas that needed the most adjustments. The praise I got from them was honestly really encouraging as well and helped build up my motivation to do the best that I could for this paper.
This assignment was challenging because of the sheer amount of information that I was working with. I believe that I cite all eight of the sources that I had at least once in the essay, because I wanted to consider as much research as possible. Overcoming these challenges took a lot of motivation (which has been kind of hard to come by as we approach the end of the semester), but my interest in the topic, as well as feedback from my peers on top of support and flexibility from my instructor, helped me get through it all. I know that I had to collaborate a lot of stuff to get this project to stick together, and I hope that the effort shows.
I wish I could’ve supplied some groundbreaking idea to fix the whole teacher shortage or that I could come up with some awesome, unthought-of solution, but this essay taught me to be honest with myself. The numbers and logic are there, even if they aren’t the most spectacular and convoluted spectacles to see. But by the end of the paper, I hope that I built my ethos up enough via my broad spectrum of sources that I mention and use in the essay.
The answer that I thought of way back when I first started this argument ended up being the focal point of my final answer, but at least now I can say that I’ve actually dived deep into the matter and say with confidence that that answer wasn’t really all that bad. I’ve got a bunch of research to back it up. Nonetheless, I think this was solid practice to help me utilize a lot of information at once to make a cohesive and solid argument. My argument itself is, again, not the craziest and most complex one that someone would ever see, but it helped me get a better hold on how to make sense while still considering a plethora of perspectives. Being a biology major and going into the STEM field, I know that synthesizing a lot of information to make solid and logical arguments is going to be invaluable in my future careers, so I’m glad that I made it through this whole project and I’d say that I’m pretty happy with the outcome.