In the United States, thousands of teachers left the profession during the COVID-19 pandemic and these vacancies have not been recovered to date, while around 41 states report a lack of teachers, especially in STEM education? Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics?, so a lack of teachers is expected in the following years in the US.
Tuan Nguyen of Kansas State University said that in response to this shortage, states have lowered requirements for certified substitute teachers or have turned to retired teachers, administrators, parents and even a national guard to fill open positions.
This was stated in a session with specialists, carried out by Ethnic Media Services, where he added that there are many vacancies in the southeast of the country: Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, which have more than 3,000 vacancies; while Florida is the highest, with more than 5 thousand positions. To date, there are still 36,500 unfilled positions.
In addition to the teacher shortage, there is a dwindling supply, because there has been a substantial decline in people's interest in becoming teachers. In 2009 and 2010, there were 700,000 enrolled in teacher preparation programs, while in 2015 and 2016 there are 400,000, which means a decrease of 40 percent.
Added to this is low retention, because not many teachers who join the profession remain teaching. Before the pandemic, about 8 percent of teachers left the profession each year nationally, but in the last 2 years it has increased substantially.
In Alaska it was 22 percent last year, in Arkansas and Illinois the average is around 12 percent. And in North Carolina and South Carolina, about 16 percent, partly because of wages. So this suggests that in the future the teacher shortage will increase.
For his part, Dr. Sean Harper from USC spoke about the politicized environment and the attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion that students face. In that sense, he explained that books that include LGBTQ+ individuals and families have been banned in many school districts across the United States.
Bills have even been introduced since January 2021 in schools to ban critical race theory, while other efforts to teach about America's racial past and present have been banned or suppressed.
"Even in a great state like California, which is notoriously progressive and has a national reputation for being so liberal, so committed to diversity and inclusion, there are multiple districts across the state where there have been gangs at the district level over racial teaching.
According to Sean Harper, nationally almost 80% of K-12 teachers are white, so the logical fallacy is that there are tons of whites teaching critical race theory to third graders or teaching eighth graders. grade on the racial history of the United States in ways that are inappropriate and racist.
Another logical error is that educators avoid talking about race in school, partly because they don't know how to do it and because it sounds like it could be an exploding power pie, but mostly because they never learned how to do it in the teacher training program or in the director certification program.
In this sense, he commented that the National Defense Commission ?DEI? it is a commission of experts who are taking stock of what is happening in schools and higher education institutions and you can contact them for more information about it.
Kasey Meehan of PEN America spoke about books being censored in public schools and public libraries, which in addition to interfering with students' rights are suppressing diverse voices and aggravating or compromising the ability of schools to prepare students to be thoughtful and engaged citizens.
"When we track book censorship, we see that 71% of all books affected by the ban are intended for a young adult audience or even younger than that, picture books and middle grade books."
If you look at the first half of the 2022-2023 school year, there were more than 1,400 instances of individual books being banned, that equates to more than 800 unique titles being removed from student access in schools.
When the influences of groups and legislation in the conduct of book censorship are traced, one finds groups and associations such as Moms for Liberty, US parents involved in education, No left turn for education, Mass resistance, Parents rights and education, Marry in the library, among many others.
Some of the groups are Christian nationalist couples, with well-defined political views and stances, while others have mission statements geared toward reforming public schools, toward more religious education within schools.
Often, he noted, the way in which vague and confusing legislation is enacted can empower these local groups and increase their intimidation. Instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity and on race is prohibited in Florida.
In Missouri and Utah the law prohibits sexually explicit material; In Texas, legislation would require bookstores to rate books sold to public schools for their sexual content, and this week in Iowa, legislation that only age-appropriate material will be allowed, although it's pretty vague.
Evelyn Aleman, founder of Our Voice Communities for Quality Education, highlighted that they are a group of volunteer parents and university students who came together three years ago, at the beginning of the pandemic, to address the lack of real lived experiences in education, specifically of Latino and indigenous immigrant families in Los Angeles County.
So a concern for Latino parents is safety in schools, safety from exposure to certain drugs in schools, awareness campaigns that don't exist, school police on campus, a measure that is not popular.
“So there are a number of reasons why they see safety as critical and that affects absenteeism. Because if parents don't feel safe sending their kids to school, they just won't do it."
Even when there are strikes, parents understand and want school workers to have a living wage. But they are also affected, because they are undocumented immigrants, they sell from door to door, and many of these parents have children with special needs.
But these lived experiences and stories are left out. And that is what they are trying to do, raise their voices, so that decision makers, such as the Los Angeles Superintendent, to whom they brought a list of demands, can hear them.
In addition to safety in general, prevention and awareness campaigns on drugs, intervention is also necessary when it is already a bit late and children are already using narcotics, coupled with protection against COVID-19, since many students, living in multigenerational families, they are afraid of bringing the virus home.
You may be interested in: PG&E awards 60 scholarships to Bay Area youth pursuing STEM studies
