Writing Assignment 6

In Writing Assignment 6, I was prompted to write a story on a trend that is happening in my beat. I decided to write about the teacher shortage and why teachers are retiring earlier than ever before.

The National Teacher Shortage Continues to Cause Concern
By: Connor Dacus

With the constant revolving door of teachers in Memphis Shelby County Schools, Maggie Williams knew
that it was time to retire.

Williams, who worked at Germantown Elementary School for 16 years, primarily retired from teaching
because of the birth of her grandchildren, but likely would have continued teaching if she felt that the
school system was run the way it was supposed to be.

“A big reason for my retirement was that the school district could not keep teachers and staff. The past
four years, our teaching staff was full of teachers that had no experience teaching, and our school was
not fully staffed” Williams said, “If I had confidence that our school would be prepared at the beginning
of each school year, I likely would have stayed.”

Lack of consistency is another reason that Williams decided to retire from teaching.

“The other reason is that MSCS (Memphis Shelby County Schools) is very inconsistent. The system
implements new programs or initiatives and is constantly changing with no regard for teachers or
students” Williams said.

The National Teacher Shortage is causing a problem to start each school year for most public schools in
the United States, and a lot of it is because of pay.

“Nearly 9 in 10 public school districts struggled to hire teachers heading into the school year, and many
potential hires were deterred by low salaries” Zachary Schemele stated in a USA Today article, “For the
current school year, 45% of all public schools reported feeling understaffed.”

Lack of salary for teachers is a very common reason for teachers retiring early or new teachers not
accepting a position. Halle Griggs, who taught English for three years at Houston High School, attributes
her retirement to the lack of pay.

“I just wasn’t getting paid enough, that with a lot of other things made me think of taking a new path”
Griggs said, “I just think that teaching is way too important to be a career paying that little.”

Griggs also believes that the behavior of students is growing worse and that a lot of teachers like her
grew tired of it.

“I also think that students are worse behaved now and disrespectful” Griggs said, “A lot of my students
were out right ridiculous, they didn’t feel the need to complete their work and would sit on their phone
with their headphones on all class period.”

The administration's behavior can also make teachers feel unwanted and not cared for.

“Not only was it the student's behavior, but also the administration” Griggs said, “It wasn’t an frequent
problem, but I felt like when I brought issues up with some people, I was an annoyance and would be
ignored.”

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Michael Ruiz, Principal at Collierville Elementary School, notices the lack of incoming teachers applying
to work at his school.

“I have definitely noticed a teacher shortage” Ruiz said, “It is getting harder and harder to fill positions
with each school year.”

The teacher shortage is affecting student attending the school and their education.

“The shortages causes us to have more students in one classroom than we would like. That makes it
more difficult for teachers to help individuals and have one on one interactions to make an impact on
students' lives” Ruiz said, “The inability to help individual students, unfortunately, can leave some
students behind.”

It is difficult for schools to retain current teachers and encourage new teachers to apply, because they
cannot increase pay on their own. Other ways to encourage new teachers are being used to try to
increase the desire to teach.

“I think the best way to encourage new teachers is just to show that your school is a healthy work
environment, that there are plenty of people to help you if you need it and that their voice will be
heard” Ruiz said.