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In 2020, everyone working in the education profession had to make adjustments. Teachers were praised for their hard work and dedication to students during an unprecedented time of remote learning.
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Nearly two years later in October 2021, the official number of vacant positions reported by schools to the Kansas State Department of Education was 1,250. A year prior, the number was 840.
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\u201cWhen the pandemic first hit, there was a movement of \u2018teachers are heroes\u2019 and \u2018we love you for what you\u2019re doing,\u2019 but that evaporated pretty quickly,\u201d said Chad Meitner, Thomas More Prep-Marian High School principal. \u201cIt\u2019s still been a tough year with a number of kids being absent due to illness, and there\u2019s expectations from families that you\u2019ll teach them even when they\u2019re home sick along with the 20 kids in your classroom.\u201d
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Meitner said that while his school in Hays isn\u2019t suffering from a shortage of teachers at the moment, changes to the lives of two or three people would bring about problems.
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\u201cIt\u2019s not as bad as I know some other schools are dealing with,\u201d he said. \u201cIf it weren\u2019t for a core of three or four really loyal substitutes, we would be in a pickle. While we seem to have good support and coverage now, it\u2019s only one step away from being a real difficulty.\u201d
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Not surprisingly, the largest number of vacancies across the state are in the Hutchinson, Wichita, Topeka and Kansas City areas. School districts in these cities and surrounding towns have vacant positions ranging from custodial to superintendent, and from elementary to secondary. According to Mischel Miller, KSDE director of teacher licensure, the positions with the most openings are special education, science, English\/language art, and math. \u201cWe did ask this year for the first time why educators were leaving,\u201d Miller said. \u201cWe found out that for health or personal reasons, more were leaving than previously, which would be the result of a pandemic. The number of substitute licenses was also up by 2,000 in 2021, so that tells me that more substitutes were needed to cover the vacant positions across the state.\u201d More recently, part of the reason why teachers are leaving might be burnout. \u201cBurnout is real,\u201d Meitner said. \u201cOur teachers are like anybody else, and they feel the stress of things. So, I think we\u2019ve just internally tried to make sure we show that we\u2019re very thankful. We try to be open to the conversation that burnout is OK. When we all have a chance to talk about it, it sure helps when you see other people going through the same thing you\u2019re going through.\u201d Fort Hays State University’s Teacher Education Department Chair Chris Jochum also said teacher burnout, and how college students in the program can be prepared, is important to discuss. \u201cThe interesting thing about teacher preparation is that at best, we prepare them for the beginning of maybe their first semester on the job. Then for better or worse, the culture of the district where they work takes over,\u201d Jochum said. \u201cWe do discuss both for students\u2019 and teachers\u2019 self-care. It\u2019s kind of tied into when we talk about social-emotional learning for students, so there is an awareness of that through the mentoring conversations and those types of things.\u201d In some cases, not only are more educators leaving the profession, fewer are coming in. According to Jochum, the number of future teachers in the FHSU virtual program is down. However, this fall there were more on-campus students in the program than the year before. \u201cThat represents Kansas communities,\u201d he said. \u201cMost of those students come from Kansas communities and want to stay in Kansas and teach. Overall, yes the numbers are down, but there\u2019s still some promising aspects when you look into the numbers.\u201d Also promising for Jochum is the efforts of the students in his department. \u201cA while back, Dr. Betsy Crawford, who is a professor up here, had a very profound observation. Despite the teacher shortage and the issues that we hear about, every day we have classrooms full of students that want to be teachers,\u201d Jochum said. \u201cThat is very positive. I think the students we have are committed to teaching, and I think it helps that they have really good instructors across the board that care about them and are advocates for the field.\u201d Miller had similar sentiments about the education field. \u201cTeaching is the greatest, most rewarding profession in the world,\u201d she said. \u201cWe need more people who want to do it and make an impact on society. I really just want to help elevate that opportunity.\u201d As for the actual problem of vacant education positions, there is not a single, definitive, end-all solution, officials said.. Instead, a combination of solutions can begin to steady one of the most impactful careers. \u201cI think we really need to be sure that we\u2019re appreciating the hard work of our teaching professionals. That\u2019s everyone,\u201d Miller said. \u201cThat\u2019s bus drivers, principals, school cooks, custodians and valuing their voice in the conversation so they feel really engaged in a local school system.\u201d Meitner wants to encourage high-school students to consider teaching in the future. \u201cHelping kids who are maybe juniors and seniors in high school see how fun and magical a classroom can be from the teachers’ perspective might inspire them to want to be a teacher,\u201d he said. \u201cI think that\u2019s a long-term solution, is to constantly be enjoying each other’s time and seeing how cool education can be together with kids and teachers in a classroom.\u201d For Jochum, a way to help educators stay in the profession is to focus on the leaders. \u201cOne way is to make sure we\u2019re putting the right leaders in our schools,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have really good leaders across the board, but just in general the leader sets the tone for the building and establishes the culture. It\u2019s not a cure-all, but I do know that when the leader gets better, the organization gets better.\u201d
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