Oklahoma school districts experiencing a teaching shortage
Educators resort to other options to fill the void of open teaching positions.
School districts across Oklahoma are currently experiencing a teacher shortage. With a decline in undergraduate students earning an education degree, an increase in workload for staff, and an incredibly low salary, districts are scrambling to fill the open teaching and support staff positions.
Fewer teachers and support staff available to assist students adds additional stress for educators to find substitutes, teachers or administrators to maintain the academic performance and needs of students.
Penny Sanders, a teacher at East Central Middle School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, describes how students deserve a highly qualified teacher instead of this new norm of finding anyone to fill a position.
“Schools all across Oklahoma are lowering the expectation when looking for someone to fill a position. We are starting our eighth week of school and still have 5 teaching positions not filled. [Meaning] there are 5 classes covered by substitutes (if we can get one) or by teachers,” Sanders said.
As school districts are struggling to fill the teaching positions, the inconsistency of having anyone available to substitute generates behavioral challenges for those students.
Brittany Gifford, an assistant principal at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, detailed the impact that the teacher shortage has had on students.
Gifford said, “Behaviors by students have been rough in those classes both because of an inconsistent classroom teacher or class sizes being too large for proper classroom management and classroom community building.”
As a result of the teaching shortage in Oklahoma, positions like a principal, counselor or teacher assistant are being delegated elsewhere in the school and handed additional responsibilities on top of their jobs. An administrator or principal could easily have to cover lunch or recess duty, or even fill in as a nurse for the day.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a decline in the number of students enrolled to earn an education degree in college. Within the past two or so years, there have been more responsibilities handed to teachers in Oklahoma. In addition to the curriculum, a teacher is required to teach, many educators have to take on extra tasks such as filling in as a substitute, having a larger class size, or covering other critical duties.
“When there are teachers or teacher assistants that are out and we can’t find another staff member to cover a duty, then I typically will have to fill that spot. However, that gets tricky because it then takes me away from being able to do any discipline that teachers need help with. Or [there are times where] discipline pops up and I am not able to make it to the duty that needs coverage to help (lunch duty or recess duty specifically),” Gifford said.
Educators across the state are trying to stay positive during such a mentally draining and challenging time. With countless hours spent outside their classrooms to cover for another class, teachers feel the burden of maintaining their own students’ academic performance while doing their best to fill in the areas where help is needed.
“I feel disrespected. I feel like my degree in education means nothing if they can get anybody to teach the class. I feel exhausted. I lose valuable time with my own class when I cover other classrooms and I have to decide what I am going to give up to get that time back; time with my family, time during the weekend, or time during my own class? That gets exhausting really quick,” Sanders said.
The atmosphere of education can be described as a time when school districts are making do with the support staff and teachers they have right now.
“Teachers are very tired. There is more mandated for us to make sure we cover our criteria to meet, now with more students in classes and still an incredibly low salary,” Gifford said.
One solution to the shortage is to increase the pay for teachers. From the National Educators Association salary report for 2019-2020, Oklahoma was ranked 34th nationally with the income of teachers, who earn an average of $54,096 in 2020.
“There needs to be a pay increase for teachers in Oklahoma. [Educators] genuinely work tirelessly to ensure that our students are receiving the best, and then our hands are tied by people outside the field that think they know what we need to be doing. We are not compensated for the work that we do and are expected to be change agents. In a business world, that would never happen,” Gifford said.
Leave a Reply