Educator Peter Smagorinsky retired from the University of Georgia at the end of 2020. His book, “Learning to Teach English and the Language Arts,” was awarded the 2022 Exemplary Research in Teaching and Teacher Education Award from the American Educational Research Association.
In this satirical essay, Smagorinsky reviews the solutions to the teacher shortage being proffered by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and others.
By Peter Smagorinsky
It has come to my attention that there is now a growing teacher shortage in the USA. I know a teacher who just quit her job and took a 30% pay cut to do something else. She is one of many who’ve quit teaching since school began.
To replace the teachers who are bailing, schools are coming up with innovative solutions. One story details the revolutionary thinking behind programs that will turn the tide on teacher attrition. They all agree on the obsolescence of the archaic idea that a teacher needs to have teaching credentials from some university. A “college degree” is no longer needed. In the words of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a diploma is just “a magic piece of paper which likely would have cost too much anyway.”
Gov. DeSantis is among the thought leaders in finding viable solutions to the shortage. His first step has been to ensure that teachers are working in decrepit buildings, paid too little, micromanaged from all directions, forced to buy their own supplies, teaching overcrowded classrooms, frightened by the prospect of violence, at the mercy of parents’ whims, required to teach mythology instead of history, discouraged from having classroom libraries whose books mention race and gender, and looking for career options. If teachers weren’t leaving, there would be no need for a solution. So it’s important to address the matter at its foundation.
Gov. DeSantis has replaced magic paper with real community college graduate diplomas, because two years of general curriculum is plenty enough to be a teacher of some subject. He’s also provided a pathway for military veterans, regardless of educational background, to teach under the guidance of mentor teachers, who may or may not still be on their jobs next week.
Gov. DeSantis has explained his position clearly: “The teachers that become great teachers don’t become great teachers because they’re sitting in some university lecture hall listening to some professor bloviate. What makes a teacher great is actually being there, doing it, watching experienced teachers and seeing what they do that works, working directly with students.”
And that’s a big part of the problem: Teachers went to college instead of going right into teaching after high school. Thank heaven that Gov. DeSantis and other creative thinkers have been solving the matter on our behalf. Arizona and Oklahoma are in the vanguard of making sure that an adult of some sort is in every classroom, as evidenced by the following.
Arizona has provided a pathway for substitute teachers with a high school degree to replace full-time teachers who leave their positions. Since so many are leaving, being a substitute is now the same as being a teacher. I assume that Gov. DeSantis is envious that many of Arizona’s teachers never attended college classes and know that everything they know about teaching comes from having been a student the year before.
I would extend Gov. DeSantis’ logic and ask, Why require a magic piece of paper from a high school either? Students themselves could become lecture hall bloviators when class size reaches 100.
The state leadership in Oklahoma has bypassed the question of credentials altogether. Teachers are required only to pass a background check and get administrative sign-off, allowing most warm bodies to become “adjunct teachers” and thus teach your kids algebra. This dispensation goes along with the state’s older rule that “emergency certification” may be granted to any college graduate to teach, an opportunity taken by many.
Unfortunately, many of the high school students will nonetheless go to college and seek bloviator-granted magic pieces of paper. University admissions committees will need to know how to evaluate students taught by science teachers whose only qualification is that they have not yet committed a crime.
These plans from these innovators are now being implemented. I applaud these innovative approaches to the teacher shortage, which will be much less costly than making teaching a fulfilling profession. I offer the following solutions to complement the praiseworthy measures developed so far in Florida, Arizona, and Oklahoma.
Unemployment offices try to match people who are out of work with positions matching their qualifications. With the qualification of qualifications now off the table, it doesn’t matter much who fills a teaching vacancy. People going to the unemployment office can simply be given directions to the nearest school, and given a subject to teach. As an added benefit, people filing unemployment claims are accustomed to spending hours on bureaucratic paperwork. They are a perfect fit for teaching in today’s schools.
Finally, it’s clear that comfort animals would make excellent teachers. Many students are struggling with mental health issues as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, being isolated from their friends, facing the reality of a planet that is cooking faster than the macaroni and cheese they ate for lunch every day during remote learning, being immersed in social media drama all day thanks to their ever-present smartphones, and being discombobulated by the behavior of the adults in their community who have made schools scapegoats for every societal ill.
A purring cat, or sleeping dog, or cuddly alligator might not know fractions well, but the soothing calm they provide a classroom of edgy kids would overcome any “learning loss” they might experience from being taught by a four-legged creature.
I offer these solutions free of charge. Like all of the solutions already in use, they are worth every penny.
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