Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
It’s all over the news. Teachers are retiring, changing professions, and just plain quitting. It should come as no surprise. The pandemic turned teaching upside down, and schools placed extraordinary demands upon teachers. In recent months, parents have become increasingly aggressive, arguing topics from masks to racism curriculum.
In addition, young people are seeing the lack of opportunity in education both professionally and financially, and they are not choosing to teach. Center for American Progress reported in 2019 that enrollment in teacher education programs declined by one third since 2010. If you did not see this coming, you haven’t been paying attention. So where will we be when no one chooses to become a teacher anymore?
1. Profession
Ideally, the profession will change. Schools will become more creative in order to attract people into the profession. More attractive salaries and benefit packages will be a must. Schools will also need to be more creative in designing the professional growth opportunities. Currently, few options exist for teachers to rise to a management and decision maker level. Reconsidering the traditional hierarchy, as many companies are currently doing, will make education a more desirable profession. Everyone needs to have a compelling future, and currently, many educators feel stagnant instead.
2. Schools Change
Without teachers available to teach, class sizes will rise. Already an issue in many areas, the lack of individual attention will drive many parents to leave the public schools. Tech companies and innovators will see the opportunity to create online curricula and programs with some standardization. Easy to access, these will be an easy sell to many parents unhappy with their school systems. Many virtual options are arising across the world due to the pandemic. Imagine parents who want to travel but do not want to be tied down to anyone else’s schedule. Their children can log on from anywhere in the world and access quality instruction.
In addition, schooling pods will offer another opportunity. Another concept from the pandemic, pods are small groups of children instructed by one or two teachers. During the pandemic, teachers traveled into people’s homes and taught. These offer small group and individualized instruction, but students are in-person rather than on a screen learning. Imagine students with learning differences or who learn best one on one or in small groups having this opportunity.
3. National Standards
Perhaps not at first, but over time, current national standards of learning will dissipate. Standardized testing is already falling by the wayside. Organizations and companies will create their own standards attached to their curricula. Think, Khan Academy and Google University. National standards will be broader and more general to accommodate the many options parents choose for educating their children. Likely, the wealthy will have many more opportunities to choose from in educating their children than the average working class family.
Recognizing and acknowledging the profession’s decline is the first step. Without immediate large scale changes, American schools as we know them cannot be saved.