Reboot: Examining Teacher Retention with Dr. Amy and Dr. Joi - Part 1

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

teachers, talk, teaching, educators, administrators, classroom, students, teaching profession, people, school, work, retention, districts, curriculum, profession, paraprofessionals, planned, leave, pandemic

SPEAKERS

Amy Vujaklija, Joi Patterson

Joi Patterson: 00:03

Teachers are wearing too many hats that they can't do their job. And now, Amy, we have this lack of autonomy and influence.

Amy Vujaklija: 00:12

This episode was originally released under the podcast titled teaching and learning theory versus practice. This rebooted episode has been migrated to teaching and leading with Dr. Amy and Dr. Joi. I am Dr. Amy Vujaklija, Director of educator preparation. And

Joi Patterson: 00:33

I am Dr. Joi Patterson, Chief Diversity Officer. Our podcast addresses issues through the lens of diversity, equity and inclusion, along with solutions for us to grow as educators.

Amy Vujaklija: 00:48

So join us on our journey to become better teachers and leaders. So let's get into it. Good morning, Dr. Joi.

Joi Patterson: 00:58

Good morning. Dr. Amy, how are you today?

Amy Vujaklija: 01:01

Well, I wonder why I said it was a good morning, actually, I'm really not in a good place. I'm an educator, I'm a teacher, educator. And I have never been so scared about the teaching profession in the history of my teaching.

Joi Patterson: 01:20

Yeah, I'm also disenchanted. And one of the words that I heard you say over and over that you're really depressed by what's going on. So this really leads then to our discussion, not only for today, but we're going to split this up into three series because this topic is so very, very important. We're going to talk about teacher retention. And this topic, Amy is important. I mean, took parents, to teachers to administrators, I think we all need to understand the impact and the outcome of teacher retention. So we're going to unpack these things today. So today, we're really going to focus on understanding the problem of why teacher retention is so important. So why do we have a teacher retention problem? Why is it so important that we address this. And before we begin, I really want to give credit to education elements for this teacher retention Guide, which I'm going to speak from a lot because I think that there's a lot of information here for us to discuss. And I'm just looking forward to your views. I know that you're passionate, we're both passionate about this. So I'm really looking forward to your views on teacher retention. And I feel like this is like my new mission now. And

Amy Vujaklija: 02:47

we've been so focused on teacher recruitment in the last several years. And that has helped us grow our education programs at Governor State University absolutely helped us develop better teaching practices and instructional strategies for helping our candidates be successful in the classroom. But there are some external factors at play here that cause people to leave the profession way too early. And way before we had planned for them to there is a particular pipeline that we need to address. And we are planning for teacher retirement, not for teacher attrition.

Joi Patterson: 03:35

Okay, so there's a precursor to this. And I'm not going to get so much into this because I really want to get into in service teacher. But when we talk about teacher retention, you know, here at Governor State University, we're working on a diversity pipeline plan for teachers, because we don't have enough diversity in teaching, and what we have learned even at Governor State University, you're right, we don't have a problem attracting candidates to become teachers that's actually improving on some level, it's still a challenge. But it is improving on some level, we have a problem keeping them. The things that we're going to talk about today are embedded in their program, the closer they get to their profession, the more disenchanted they become and start thinking maybe this is not the profession for me. Maybe I need to do something else. So that tension retention challenge starts before they're even in service teacher, it starts as a pre service teacher. So that's a topic for another day. But I just wanted to put that out there that it starts before even entering into the classroom. So we're going to talk about why retention is so critical. Let's talk about K 12. So we know that k 12. In many areas, it's still increasing enrollment is still increasing at the same time. line, the teaching population is falling off drastically. And so there's this huge imbalance when you take the pandemic, and you put that on top of that, then that is even a wider spread. We are learning that due to COVID. Teachers are planning to retire early teachers were working well beyond their retirement age. But now teachers are retiring on time, teachers are retiring early, we will lose all of the baby boomers, which was the bulk of our teachers. That's a problem.

Amy Vujaklija: 05:37

I saw one study that surveys suggested that this shortage will grow even wider. So in the midst of the pandemic, 20% of teachers reported in a USA Today poll that they were not going to return to the classroom the next year. However, the National Education Association indicates that there's a much greater number than that they did a nationwide poll of 3621 educators and released these results in January of 2022. More than half 55% of these members say that they are more likely to leave or retire from education sooner than planned, mostly because of the pandemic. But we know that the pandemic has just exacerbated a lot of issues that were already in place in the teaching environment.

Joi Patterson: 06:37

I used to call it the four Ps five Ps reasons teachers leave because of parents because of policy because of pressure, because of PE all of those things. But it's really broad and beyond that, at some point in this segment, we'll get to the meat of why it's happening, and how schools can start to retain teachers, teacher quality. So let's talk about why this is so important. The number one reason is teacher quality, in my estimation, because this is what results in student achievement, right? is based on a teacher quality, we know that the better qualified the teacher is, the better outcome you have for the students, darling Hammond says that she did a lot of studies, and also she studied in a healthy workplace. So in a healthy school, you typically weed out the ineffective teachers, right? So your effective teachers stay longer. You're ineffective teachers, we weed them out. But when we're experiencing this shortage, your quality teachers, your high quality teachers, they like I'm out, Amy, they're like, I know, I can't do this. There's too many barriers, there's too many pressure. I'm working really hard and spinning my wheels I'm out. And so what are we left with, then we're left with an abundance of in effective teachers. This is a new trend.

Amy Vujaklija: 08:10

We're seeing that the experienced teachers end up taking on more responsibilities. So you have those experienced teachers having more of the students who have discipline issues, teachers who need to bring the test scores up. So they have the students who may be have learning disabilities or need special care in their instruction. We have those who may have other strengths, designing curriculum, preparing test. So those are the teachers who are stretched super thin, we have a shortage of substitute teachers, the shortage of

Joi Patterson: 08:56

shortage of paraprofessionals,

Amy Vujaklija: 08:59

who would then take on the role of covering a class if the teacher is ill, that is not happening. These experienced teachers and maybe less experienced teachers are now covering other classes during planning periods during times in which they should be preparing lessons for their classes. So we end up with a snowball effect of burnout. And what we're seeing is that biggest issue facing educators is feeling burned out. 67% of the people who responded to this survey said it's a very serious issue. 90% said it's serious, or slightly serious 10% of educators, I don't know who isn't feeling burned out Right, right. So

Joi Patterson: 09:56

let's talk about that small percentage. There are some low Like schools who don't have a huge teacher shortage, they may have a teacher shortage because less people are entering the field. But they're not having the challenge of teacher retention. And there are some influence schools that are like that. But when we start talking about Marginalized schools, especially, so let me give you a scenario. You're the administrator at an inner city school, a marginalized school, a title one school, whatever you want to call it, you have a teacher shortage, ami, what are you going to do? Who are you going to put in the classroom in front of those students? What are you going to do as the administrator? That's

Amy Vujaklija: 10:41

a huge question. We have administrators who substitute teach in their own school buildings.

Joi Patterson: 10:48

Absolutely we do. We have administrators that we can't contact, because they're in the classroom substitute teaching. At my daughter's school, they may add additional $100 A day when they take students from other classrooms. So because they don't have enough substitute teachers, and enough teachers, they will split of third grade classroom, you take half the other teacher case, the other half, and each teacher gets an extra $100. For that day, there's two things my daughter says, yes, the $100 is good. I appreciate that the school is trying to do something. But when it occurs, over and over and over, learning is not occurring, because then her job becomes classroom management and babysitting. So it's a huge problem, you see that the schools that are marginalized, are impacted the most, because you need a person in front of the kid. That means that you may be willing to accept someone who's less qualified, right? So you're accepting someone that's less qualified, someone who may have not received the training. So there's a lack of training, you may have to count on subs more often. And maybe some of them are inexperienced substitute teachers, then you have to call upon your paraprofessionals. And if you're in where is it, New Mexico, what do you do Amy, who do you call then?

Amy Vujaklija: 12:24

The latest news article I came across was in New Mexico, they needed to call the National Guard as volunteers to substitute teach in some schools. Some of them loved the experience and really appreciated their interactions with students. But that gets away from the real problem of why this even had to happen. What do we do?

Joi Patterson: 12:53

I know and so you're the administrators. And I understand how administrators and I don't have a quick answer at this point when we're talking about this, because you do need the students to be safe. You need a body in front of the students sight understand what New Mexico had, you know, I'm sure it was tough to make that decision. But they needed someone in front of the kids that could keep the kids safe. But this is happening all over, especially in Marginalized schools. And then when we look at our teacher disparity, and ethnicity, we know that we have more than 80% of our teacher population are white educators. The other 20% is a variety of minority teachers. And one thing that we have learned all students benefit from minority teachers, all students benefit from diversity of teachers, and that when you have that diversity, and especially when students can see teachers that look like them, that is a huge impact on their self esteem and social, emotional, and academic achievement. And so we were able to increase the diversity of teachers, then we could start to close the achievement gap. But guess what, Amy? Those minority teachers, especially African American teachers, are leaving the field faster than any other ethnicity in the teaching profession.

Amy Vujaklija: 14:29

Let me reference this in a poll again. 55% of members are more likely to leave or retire sooner than planned. But when we're talking about Hispanic or Latin X, that's 59% Who wants to leave education sooner than planned for African American black educators? 62% These numbers are painting a really dismal picture. I want to talk about your daughter's experience in covering classes 74% of educators said yes, they have had to fill in for colleagues or take on other duties due to staff shortages. As I was saying earlier, the planning period, the time in which you might have one on one instruction with students, or prepare lessons for the next class period, the next day, or scheduled parent teacher conferences, attend individualized education meetings, work with your special educator, collaborate with your department collaborate with your grade level team, those opportunities are taken away, when you are asked to cover another class, your daughter appreciates some extra pay. And absolutely a large percentage of people strongly support raising educator salaries. But in us close second, there is higher more teachers, we can't add more hours in the day, just by raising pay, pay is nice, we need the salaries to pay our bills, we also need to be able to have time with families and to recharge.

Joi Patterson: 16:21

So here, this is what I think PE can do. If the teacher salaries are increased significantly, what it means is it makes the teaching profession more attractive. And if the teaching profession is more attractive, than we will have more people that flocked to teaching, teacher entry will be larger. So we'll have more of a teacher pool. There are some internal things going on. There are some other things that you're you're hinting to that's impacting teacher retention is not just money. So if we increase the salary that will get us more teachers initially, that doesn't mean that they're going to stay beyond five years, we're looking at research, there's been a lot of money dumped into research on teacher retention. And still there is no clear solution.

Amy Vujaklija: 17:14

I agree with what you're saying, with raising the pay to make it at the level of other professions, comparable professions in the field. There are very few jobs you can actually have without having some kind of education in your background. But yet the people who educate you cannot achieve that same salary. But I'm not going to hint, I'm actually going to say it out loud 36%. Only 36% of teachers believe that American society values the teaching profession, this is pretty alarming.

Joi Patterson: 17:52

It doesn't alarming. And I think that does go but I think it goes back to pay again. And let me tell you why. Because I think you get what you pay for. In many cases, we have high expectations of teachers, when they are going through a rigorous preparation program like we have here at Governors State University, and many universities across the country. They have to not only pass all of your assessments, right, they have to go through your curriculum, pass all your assessments, but there's proprietary assessments that they have to pass. So the state and our national accreditation has to give their stamp of approval, they go through a rigorous process. These are intelligent people. So I wrote an article before about teacher retention and minorities, we're talking about people who can, they can do a lot of other things other than teach. This is not the 1930s anymore, where you can be a teacher or a secretary. They can be engineers, they can be doctors, they can be lawyers, 1000s of other careers that wasn't available to them 60 years ago that are now available. So if I'm the person that can, why would I choose teaching, if I can be an engineer, my AC t score allows me to get into school for engineering allows me to be an attorney allows me to do communication allows me to do business allows me to do all these other things that pay 2, 3, 4 times as much. Why would I want to be a teacher that's not even thinking about all the other things that we're going to talk about. But just pay along? Why would I want to be a teacher if I can do all of these other things. So that's why I'd say pay is important. When you increase pay, then you can demand more, you can increase quality, and then the teachers themselves will start to demand a certain level of respect and it's more of a respectable position at that point. And right now when you see unqualified have teachers in the classroom that are teaching children? How can the profession demand respect? We have teachers that are not certified. Would you go to a doctor that doesn't have credentials?

Amy Vujaklija: 20:12

You make a really good point. We have several teachers, a lot of teachers right now filling the shoes of educators in classrooms like boots on the ground in front of our students who don't meet the qualifications or are not yet licensed, or our substitute teachers who are in a long term substitute teaching position paraprofessional who might be asked to be Instructor of Record rather than a co teacher or an assistant in the classroom. So we have what's going to end up and has now become a cycle. We have a lot of people who see that there are unqualified teachers in the classroom. If we have unqualified teachers, or less qualified teachers, their views on professionalism are diminished. Correct.

Joi Patterson: 21:06

Let's talk about what's the impact of staff turnovers. We know that teacher turnover affects districts in many ways. The number one way that the teacher turnover is impactful is on student learning. As you become more and more experienced as a teacher, the better you get, right. But if you're not there beyond five years, we don't get those excellent teachers. And if we don't get those excellent teachers, then we can't have excellent student achievement. What's the cost of replacing a teachers, some districts, they estimate anywhere from 10 to 20,000 per teacher that they lose of replacing that teacher because we're talking about additional professional development, and on and on, there's lots of costs related to hiring new teachers, districts are spending money, every time they lose a teacher is just one thing stacked on top of another Amy, there's just such a huge impact when we have this kind of staff turnover. When we see

Amy Vujaklija: 22:17

a large number of experienced teachers in a school, you also get a sense of mentorship and of preparation for your beginning teachers, your student teachers, first year, second year teachers, with experienced teachers, there's not only that growth in student learning, but there's that professional development for your new teachers. And we know that there's a lot of innovation that a new teacher can bring into the classroom. That's why we want new teachers, we want them to be innovative and creative, but there has to be a balance. We want to make sure that our students are also having experiences with experienced professionals who have a lot of student learning, understanding and assessment, understanding and curriculum development under their belts. Alright,

Joi Patterson: 23:15

so let's talk about why teachers stay and why teachers leave. Amy, I consider myself a teacher, you're a teacher. And we were both middle school teachers, hardest teachers on the planet, I tell you, but we were both middle school teachers. Why did you enjoy being a middle school teacher? Why did you stay in that position?

Amy Vujaklija: 23:38

There are so many reasons Joy, I had a great environment, wonderful callings. And we worked as a team. We had an administration that respected our professionalism, and shared with us the reasons why certain policies were being put into place or why we were doing different assessments or gathering particular data. When I understand why I'm doing something, it certainly adds to the element of trust, I feel that someone has in Maine. But there was another turning point in my profession. And that was being involved with the local writing project. That was a group of professionals who really honored each other. And I felt like I was being invited to this like Cool Kids Group. I belonged. There were like a ton of smart people in this organization. And I didn't know if I belonged there. They co experienced and they were so thoughtful and I was invited. And I could share my understanding share my knowledge and what I thought about education when I thought about teaching or writing, I felt part of something so that sense of belonging both in the middle school and in that professional net work was very empowering to me, it helped keep me grounded. I went on to leave K 12 Education whenever I began my doctoral program, because the reason I became a doctoral program is because I was in the classroom, I was teaching a new subject. And I realized how much I didn't know, I wanted to know more. And so as I continued with my doctoral program, I had more opportunities. And I thought maybe I could influence more people to become teachers. If I went into higher education. Oh,

Joi Patterson: 25:35

like you, I loved being a teacher, I could not believe that I was getting paid for doing what I was doing. And I had all non English speaking students, and I taught science in middle school, I loved it, I was able to tune out many of the politics that were going on in the school, and in the district, because I worked for a very large district, I remember I had Do Not Disturb sign on my door. So the teacher chatter, all that I was able to escape that. But I was also very much supported by administrators just like you. And so working on my doctorate while I was teaching in middle school, and so it was my administrator that saw something in me and say, Can you do this? Can you do this? Can you take on this leadership role? Can you take on this leadership role? So as I started to take on those leadership roles, I saw how I can impact education from a different route, then I got into higher education, like you very much wanting to impact teacher candidates at a very early level, and how can we attract more teachers? And how can we better prepare teachers. So I feel very much that I'm still I am a teacher, and I'm still very much involved in the teaching and learning and student learning process.

Amy Vujaklija: 27:08

I always tell my candidates that the reason I'm a teacher educator is not because I was ever a perfect teacher, that I was always seeking to grow, always thinking that next professional development, opportunity, training, or way to improve my teaching, and I had fantastic mentors. So I always say if I can channel the mentors, who I have had, and share their knowledge with my teacher candidates, then I will be doing my job.

Joi Patterson: 27:41

I talked to my daughter who's a third grade teacher 12 years now. And for the first time, she said, By next year, I'm going to find something else to do. She said, I don't know if there's going to be a new school, or just something else in education, she said, but I can't continue to do what I'm doing. She said, I just had an evaluation and scored perfectly on everything. And no conversation with my administrator. She said, I know I'm far from perfect, and I do not have an opportunity to grow. Like they're not helping her grow. And if she can't grow as a teacher, then that harms the students pay is always an issue. So she has a side job, her husband works a side job, because pay is an issue. And then she's crying over the limitations now a things that are being taken away from her. I can't teach this anymore. I can't teach that anymore. I have to ask the parents if I could do this. Things are changing in terms of the curriculum, where teachers don't have the autonomy that they had once before. And you were going to speak to that too. So I think we can kind of end this segment and talking more about why teachers are leaving. So we talked about PE and we've talked about pressure. We talked about some racial disparities. We talked about teachers having too many jobs you talked about teachers are wearing too many hats, that they can't do their job. And now, Amy, we have this lack of autonomy and influence.

Amy Vujaklija: 29:21

I want to speak to that an alarming rate of 79% of people leave their jobs citing the lack of appreciation as the top reason. We need to provide teacher voice and decision making and that's what's lacking in a lot of the policies that are being approved and implemented in schools, districts and states across the nation. Teachers hands are becoming tied when it comes to discussing culturally relevant teaching practices and really honoring the diversity of students in their classroom. So if educators are limited to what materials they can use in their classroom or have available to students in their classroom, we are also eliminating a segment of our students who need to see themselves in the books and the materials. So the autonomy is missing. The teacher voice and decision making is missing. There is and always has been the opportunity for parents to weigh in on curriculum. So I'm not sure why there now has to be a policy in place to demand an advisory board for parents and community members and educators to make decisions on curriculum. There's always been the opportunity for people to voice opinions about curriculum. The professional educator is really under fire right now.

Joi Patterson: 30:59

It is I want us to continue to tackle this. Our next segment, we're going to talk about how districts approach improving teacher retention. Because this is a problem that we need to solve, Amy, I'm glad that we're in it to help solve that problem and help with this teacher retention problem. I mean, it's a big problem and is going to impact our student outcome in a huge way. So I'm glad we're in this together. It's

Amy Vujaklija: 31:27

because of you and other colleagues like you that I am staying in the profession because we

31:34

got a stay. I know there's a lot of work for you to do. Amy, you can't leave if we

Amy Vujaklija: 31:39

don't stay who's going to be around to fight the good fight?

Joi Patterson: 31:43

Absolutely.

Amy Vujaklija: 31:45

Thank you for listening to teaching and leading with Dr. Amy and Dr. Joi. Visit our website at govst.edu/teaching and leading podcast to see the show notes from this episode.

Joi Patterson: 32:02

We appreciate Governor State University's work behind the scenes to make publishing possible. Stay tuned for more episodes with Dr. Amy and Dr. Joi