Reopening Our Schools

Our nation is experiencing a teacher shortage, and the state of Missouri is not exempt from that reality. In February and March, many districts in the St. Louis area host job fairs so teacher applicants can learn what a district has to offer. This year, I attended my school district’s job fair, and hundreds of teachers waited in long lines for a chance at a one-minute conversation with a staff member. That’s the reality in my suburban Missouri school. It is not lost on me, however, that a 30- to 45-minute drive east or west to either rural Missouri or urban Missouri does not have this advantage. In fact, while some districts boast a large number of applicants for a single job opening, in a nearby urban school district, 70 teaching positions still sat vacant in the middle of February. Some districts in Missouri are attracting great teachers — because of their reputation, their tax base, their test scores, their pay scale and their benefits — while others are desperately hoping to fill a position.

Thankfully, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) decided to try to tackle the teacher shortage by supporting districts around our state who want to start a Grow Your Own (GYO) program in their schools. For the 2019-2020 school year, DESE will invest $50,000 into five schools ($10,000/school). In order to be selected, each school must complete a grant application discussing how they will implement some form of a GYO program in their district. The hope is that: 1) this will begin to address teacher shortages in high-needs content areas (math, science and special education) and certain geographical regions, 2) it will recruit a more diverse workforce, 3) it will improve teacher retention through school and community supports, and 4) it will increase the learning success of Missouri students under a high-quality teaching staff. The catch? Schools must meet at least one of the following criteria: high poverty (100% free and reduced lunch), high minority (49-100% minority students), and/or remote/rural.

A GYO program can and does have many different looks across the state of Missouri. Some programs simply offer a teacher club as an extracurricular activity students can join. One program has a foundation, which raises money to offer future teachers in their high schools a scholarship if they enroll in a college of education and plan to teach in a high-needs content area (math, science or special education). Another program enrolls middle and high school students — primarily students of color and first-generation college students — in a paid summer internship to work in classrooms. This same program offers teaching experience each year of high school and culminates in offering full-ride scholarships to an area university if the student graduates and agrees to return to this district to teach for a minimum of three years. Moreover, this program provides mentorship for the students throughout the time they are earning their college degree. The programs to attract future teachers are and can be vastly different. When completing the grant application, each school is encouraged to assess both their needs and resources to figure out a sustainable model since the funding is only a one-year guarantee.

The GYO Task Force hopes establishing GYO programs across the state of Missouri will help the cause in attracting great teachers. Currently, 30 Missouri high schools out of approximately 600 high schools have some sort of GYO program, so there is still work to be done to attract people to the teaching profession.

Then, of course, the question remains: Once we get quality teachers, how can we keep those great teachers in our classrooms and schools? One school in Camdenton, Missouri is off to a great start. Camdenton offers salaries in the top 10% of salary schedules across the state, the district pays the premium cost for health insurance and allows employees to add a spouse and children, they offer attendance incentives where employees’ sick days can be “bought back,” they provide strong mentoring supports, and they have a career ladder where teachers can earn up to $4,000 in addition to their salary if they do work above and beyond their contractual duties. More school districts across Missouri and the nation would do well to follow Camdenton’s lead.

In order to attract great teachers to the profession, we have to be both forward-thinking and creative. School districts starting GYO programs is a great first step. However, it’s not enough to attract teachers to the profession only to have them leave in their first five years. In order to keep great teachers, we must honor their work and support their growth. Both facets are equally crucial to all students — no matter where they live — having access to great teachers.

There are many enviable aspects to rural life and work as a teacher in the United States. One is surrounded by natural beauty, clean water and air, and ample opportunities for outdoor recreation. Rural teachers often benefit from small class sizes, smaller overall student load, increased autonomy in planning and instruction, and broad intellectual and physical space with which to grow one’s educational programs and career path. I have found rural living and teaching in Maine to be a wonderful choice both personally and professionally.

However, there are challenges associated with living in the countryside, especially as a younger person. The charmed independence of rural living can often bring feelings of isolation and the real or perceived cultural barriers which separate the professional from the community. While rural America might not have a great deal of ethnic or racial diversity, it does have incredible diversity in terms of wealth, educational attainment, philosophical underpinnings and sociopolitical perspectives. Generational poverty, food insecurity, a dearth of health care resources and limited academic aspirations are likely to affect students at every level. In a nationwide teacher shortage, it is very difficult to attract and retain teachers in rural communities. This difficulty is rooted in a series of barriers which are persistent, yet surmountable.

In terms of attracting new teachers and second-career teachers to the countryside, relocation costs, salary expectations and social integration issues are the largest barriers.

Regarding relocation, schools should adopt the practice of either providing signing bonuses while on-boarding new faculty or providing a relocation allowance to defray moving costs. Lowering that financial barrier for the new teacher is perhaps the greatest investment a community could make.

In terms of salary expectations, rural communities will have difficulty matching lifetime earnings available in urban and suburban areas, but a more robust benefits package (comprehensive life, dental, vision and health insurance for the whole family at minimal cost, along with loan forgiveness) could greatly impact the total compensation package. Salaries often can be stretched further outside of the cities and suburbs, and that is a fact which should not be overlooked.

Social integration into the rural community can be best addressed through a comprehensive professional mentoring and a social induction program. As much as teachers need to learn the professional evaluation systems and grading policies of the district, they also need to know what community organizations they can join, where they can buy groceries or get haircuts, where and how municipal services are accessed, and what other recreational opportunities exist, just as corporations would.

Some other barriers to retaining teachers in rural areas include limited opportunities for professional growth, truncated lifetime earnings and retirement prospects, and a higher number of different classes on one’s course load. These are not unreasonable concerns. They, too, can be addressed with comprehensive policy changes.

While teaching has traditionally been a “flat” profession, that notion is changing, and rural school districts are equally able to delineate comprehensive career ladders for each position within their schools. The districts need to help teachers understand how to become lead teachers, instructional coaches, curriculum developers and department heads, along with a portrait of what might be required for additional education and training, et cetera.

Salary and retirement concerns can be addressed by compacting salary schedules in order to reach peak earnings earlier in the career. If we allow teachers to build their financial foundations earlier, we will thereby limit their overall debt obligations.

For instruction, maintaining a 15:1 student-to-teacher ratio and a total prep load of three classes or fewer should allow teachers to produce their best work. Every person working in rural schools wears many hats, but there are responsible and measured ways to assign the additional responsibilities while avoiding burnout. Rural schools are among the few places where this is possible.

Rural educators have the ability to negotiate their own paths forward, channeling the spirit of enterprising people from generations past. John Muir offered pithy wisdom about the countryside in his 1912 adapted work “The Plunge into the Wilderness” when he and his siblings were moved from urban Scotland to rural Wisconsin:

“This sudden splash into pure wilderness…how utterly happy it made us! Nature streaming into us, wooingly teaching her wonderful glowing lessons, so unlike the dismal grammar ashes and cinders so long thrashed into us. Here, without knowing it, we still were at school; every wild lesson a love lesson, not whipped, but charmed, into us.”

There is and always will be great time and space to think in the woods, on the coasts, on the plains and in the mountains, but visualization is paramount. Rural communities and rural teachers can reap the benefit of this space with appropriate structures and visions in place to advance themselves, their students and their communities. They, the teachers, have the ability to be autonomous in their classroom instruction, interdisciplinary in their curriculum development and intricately involved with the community at large, if they are shown it is a viable and supportive path. It is incumbent upon American society to help rural teachers visualize a gratifying and productive existence by way of initiatives that attract and retain the best teachers possible.

B I became a teacher, I was going to be an immigration lawyer to defend immigrant families in the courtroom. This was inspired by the death of my 19-year-old sister in The Gambia who was denied a visa to seek medical treatment in the U.S. whilst medical treatment was exhausted in The Gambia. I later decided to become a teacher instead to help young immigrants avoid the courtroom and to empower them to become contributing members of society. Today, rather than defending young immigrants in the courtroom, I prepare them for a successful future.

It was Friedrich Nietzsche who said, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” The teaching profession is about empathy and compassion. The moral interactions we have with our students have profound, long-lasting implications. Good teachers have a strong sense of purpose and they create positive outcomes for their students, and the lives those students will influence as adults.

So, let’s start with how best to attract good teachers. First, teachers must be treated as professionals. Collectively, we must work to elevate the teaching profession so that bright young people can aspire to become one. Great teachers beget great teachers. I was inspired to teach by teachers who invested their talents in me. Many teachers have lots of expertise but are confined to the classroom and often told to focus on their lessons. By harnessing the collective intelligence of teachers, we can improve the success of the profession overall.

Teaching is one of the most noble professions, yet teachers often don’t get compensated appropriately. Competitive starting salaries will help attract good applicants. And this will also be tremendous in elevating the status of the teaching profession. It is also fair and moral. Just think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. For someone to be self-actualized, their basic needs must be met. Teachers cannot thrive in their profession if their basic needs are not being met and if we don’t pay teachers adequately to live dignified lives. It’s very hard for them to live fulfilled lives, no matter how much they love teaching. I recognize the reality of limited federal, state and local budgets, but we must prioritize our values when we spend taxpayer dollars.

So, to attract good teachers, we must treat existing teachers as professionals and compensate them fairly. Now, let’s turn to the question of how to keep good teachers once we hire them. Of course, strategies on attracting good teachers apply equally to retaining them.

The most important strategy for retaining good teachers is giving them a good mentor right at the beginning of their careers. In many teacher preparation programs, we tend to shuffle students around to different mentors in an attempt to give them a wide variety of experiences.
We should instead match teachers up with proven teachers and mentors and let them learn directly from the practices of the best teachers. Whatever new teachers learn in teacher preparation programs, they tend to use in the classroom. If we could match young teachers with great teachers, they learn from the best role models available. They see good teaching in practice. And while new teachers might be exposed to many different approaches, they may not be learning the best ways to teach.

As the 2019 New York State Teacher of the Year, I have had many rich and splendid experiences by traveling to different schools and classrooms, and learning different techniques, strategies and approaches. I am a much more enriched teacher than I was a year ago. But it should not have taken an award to receive those sorts of experiences. All teachers should be afforded these opportunities to cross-pollinate with other brilliant teachers. We can create more avenues in the profession where teachers can more actively explore these innovative ideas sprouting up in classrooms all over the nation. Randi Weingarten said it best: “Teaching is a profession in which capacity building should occur at every stage of the career — novices working with accomplished colleagues, skillful teachers sharing their craft and opportunities for teacher leadership.”

In addition, social-emotional support for teachers, particularly new teachers, is a pivotal ingredient to retaining good teachers. While discussions of the social-emotional health of students abound, few think about the social-emotional health of teachers. By developing a culture of support for teacher social and emotional well-being, we can mitigate the difficult environments they must navigate, and the immense stress young teachers face.

Mentoring and social-emotional support can help teachers to become leaders in the profession. We thereby spread the collective wisdom and mastery from one another, making all of us better and likely inspiring our students to follow in our footsteps.