Irving High School Would you want to be a teacher if you had to deal with constant behavior problems, little input on your curriculum on top of managing your personal life? With teacher retention becoming an issue, it brings attention to the statistic that half of the
250,000 new teachers leave within their first five years of teaching. This issue can be traced to many sources, including disciplinary problems, curriculum mishaps along with personal issues and decisions. As a student, I see, disciplinary problems as a big factor for new teachers leaving the field. As years pass, students lose respect for teachers seeking their own way. More times than not, teachers lose control of their students, then are unable to regain the control . Teachers try several methods, often failing and losing hope. After talking to a few teachers to get their perspective most came to the conclusion that the fault in the schools systems is that discipline is not carried out consistently across the board.One teacher states, “Its hard to teach your class with constant interruptions, lack of participations and cooperation, and several other issues that should be taken care of but aren’t. You do as much as you can, but when its not carried out by others its pointless.” Teachers as a whole agree that their hands are behind their backs.“There is not much we can do or even threaten to do, and the recurring problem is the children know this.” Some teachers brought up the fact that the statements they give about the students are belittled and questioned by administration. “The blame of unruly children is placed on the teacher who can not resume control.” Another teacher adds “The best interest of a class as a whole is less important than handling the individual problems holding back the whole class.”
Other teachers say that they have several disagreements with the curriculum, they feel as if they are teaching to a test, not for the success of their students. “I dont think I should use my teaching skills to teach our upcoming generation on how to answer a test question correctly or how to fit into the standard the state provides us with. As a teacher I want my students to use these things throughout life to be successful and have the skills necessary to be an adult.” Teachers are given approximately 8 months to get through standardized tests. “We spend so much time preparing for the state mandated test we don't have time to teach. Throughout the school year with district exams, semester exams, standardized exam along with curriculum exams we are simply focused on getting through the next test, not teaching useful material or even material that will be retained due to the rush.”
Some possible things that could be done to resolve this issue is having a disciplinary system set across American Public Schools as a whole, a system that is to be followed out Nation wide. This would leave no gaps in punishments and would be fair. A possible resolution to accommodate to the curriculum is to spread it nation wide instead of state by state. Within the curriculum should be things neccesary to be an adult along with a set amount of assessments.
If this trend and retention continues the interest of being a teacher will decrease, along with the knowledge from generation to generation. It is important to address
these issues now because you can never go back, the trend will continue. The bad part of teacher retention is that education is losing qualified, highly educated, caring, good teachers who have a passion to teach others but can not do so under todays
“acceptable” guidelines.