Reading, Writing, and. Recruiting?

Shure, Jennifer L., Techniques

America's schools are facing a severe teacher shortage that has administrators pulling out all of the stops to find qualified educators for our classrooms.

There are many things that we as Americans take for granted. Clean drinking water, electricity, the highway system, and even, school teachers. Yes, school teachers. As kids, we probably never really appreciated what we had, and that was an abundance of teachers to lead our classrooms. We maybe even tested our teachers' patience at times thinking that no matter what, our teachers would always be around. As it turns out, we can no longer assume that there will be enough qualified teachers for our schools.

Neither disdain from students nor schoolyard pranks have made America's teachers run for the hills, but many other factors have in reality driven hordes of teachers or potential teachers away from this most honorable profession. Now as adults and educators ourselves, we are realizing that we can no longer take our teachers for granted or we will no doubt be jeopardizing our children's futures and in turn, the future of our country.

To say that America is facing a teacher shortage is like saying that microbiology is playtime with a microscope. Our teacher shortage is more like a teacher crisis and it is quickly reaching its boiling point. At the end of each year, school administrators are holding their breath wondering who will be returning to work the next year and who will not, leaving vacancies to be filled, often for hard-to-fill areas of study.

According to the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, there are 90,874 public schools in the United States and about 2.8 million teachers serving more than 46 million students. There are also about five million students in the U.S. who attend private schools.

This teacher shortage knows no boundaries as it is affecting public and private schools, urban and rural schools alike, specifically in the areas of special education, mathematics, science, foreign language study, bilingual education and, even career and technical education.

The need for foreign language and bilingual education …

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information: Article title: Reading, Writing, and. Recruiting?. Contributors: Shure, Jennifer L. - Author. Magazine title: Techniques. Volume: 76. Issue: 5 Publication date: May 2001. Page number: 18. © 2007 Association for Career and Technical Education. COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group.

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