By Ralph Mayo
It is amazing to me how many decisions that a building leader or teacher has to make in one day. Sometimes those decisions have very little impact on the management of a school or classroom and other times those decisions have powerful repercussions. No matter how large or small, it is imperative that each determination be based on what is best for the students. The pandemic has added an extra layer to the process, there are no simple solutions any longer. The pandemic has hurt our schools and the relationships we have built with our students and parents. It has made so many of us angry and frustrated, which could hinder our students’ ability to learn and our teachers’ capacity to educate our young adults. We are almost into our third year of Covid 19 and most of us thought that it would be over by now, but we were wrong. We have begun an era where it is extremely difficult to teach or lead and why educators and administrators are retiring at alarming rates across the country.
What is most disturbing to me is that we have very few people who want to become educators and even less who would like to be building leaders. We used to have hundreds of educators apply for every open position in our school district. Our school district has always gone out of its way to recruit teachers, but qualified professionals are losing interest in pursuing a career in education. This was true before the pandemic and the shortages are even more profound now. The numbers are so low that individual towns are offering incentives to recruit teachers and our Governor has recently announced that retired teachers may return to work without any penalty to their retirement.
The level of difficulty in the day-to-day operation of a classroom can chase even veteran educators away from the profession. Educators are not afraid of hard work, long hours and in building relationships with their colleagues, parents and students. But staff members are concerned about the growing number of tasks that they must complete that are unrelated to teaching and learning.
I am an optimistic individual who is always looking for the best in people and institutions. We need to and will bounce back from all of the turmoil that the pandemic has caused, so our students and parents will feel more connected to our schools However, we must make our profession more attractive to our current staff and for potential staff members. If we refuse or are unable to take action, we will be putting our community’s future at risk.
