When Tim Walz was announced as Kamala Harris’ running mate earlier this month, his ascendancy helped to elevate the idea of educators serving in public office.

Walz, who served several terms in Congress before becoming the governor of Minnesota in 2018, is a former high school social studies teacher and football coach who, to this day, holds those identities close. Come January 2025, depending on the outcome of the election, he could be moving to Washington, D.C., to serve as vice president of the United States.

Though Walz is squarely in the spotlight during this election, a number of other educators are seeking public office this year, many for the first time.

In many ways, politics is an obvious and natural progression for educators, teacher-candidates and political scientists say.

This summer, EdSurge spoke with five individuals running for election — three classroom teachers, one superintendent and an early childhood advocate — about their motivations and the skills and experiences that would set them up for success in office, if elected in November.

Once a Public Servant, Always a Public Servant

Plenty of former educators hold public office today, including at the federal level, such as Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, a former preschool teacher, and Rep. Jahana Hayes of Connecticut, a former high school history and government teacher.

The step from public teacher to public office holder is, for many, intuitive, says Kelly Siegel-Stechler, a senior researcher at Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

“They’re already public servants,” Siegel-Stechler points out. “They have a lot of insight and experience in how to navigate some of the challenges that go along with large public institutions and the processes that make government happen.”

Jonathan Collins, an assistant professor of political science and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, adds that individuals who prioritize public service and volunteerism are more likely to engage with civic and political organizations.

Arguably the highest form of service is to teach every day.

— Jonathan Collins

“It’s the involvement in those networks that tends to catapult people into the process of running for office,” Collins says. “Think about teachers and teachers’ unions, about what a teacher does on an everyday basis. Arguably the highest form of service is to teach every day.”

Chad King Wilson Sr. is a high school alternative education and social studies teacher in Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland. He’s running for a seat on the Frederick County Board of Education this November.

Teachers, Wilson says, understand that their role — with students, with families, in a community — has a certain power and, with it, demands a certain responsibility.

“In politics today, the decisions our elected officials make affect our lives — sometimes in small ways, sometimes big,” he says. “Educators have a service mindset and a duty of care in everything they do. That serves you well in any elected position, because you’re already serving. You’re a public servant, [asking], ‘How can I uplift you? How can I get you where you need to be?’”

Education Is Inherently Political — Even More So Today

Between the pandemic, which led to divisive and prolonged school closures, and the increasing politicization of education — from book bans to discussions of gender identity and legislation about what can be taught or said in a classroom — many teachers feel vilified.

“Teachers have found themselves under intense scrutiny in recent years, and that has really made them staunch advocates,” says Siegel-Stechler of Tufts. “When you feel like you are asked to justify and asked to uphold your values, that can lead you to want to make big changes.”

A few conditions must be in place for someone to run for office, adds Collins of Columbia. Once you account for access to resources and connections, the most important factor is being energized.

“You could argue no professional has had reasons to be as fired up over the last few years as teachers,” he says. “Teachers have been showing that they are fed up for quite a while. It’s the people who get fed up who tend to see politics as that next step as well.”

Especially when teachers feel that the conversations being had and decisions being made about them and their students don’t reflect reality, that can inspire some to run.

Numerous candidates noted that their school boards and state legislatures lack representation from people who have knowledge and understanding about schools today.

“You don’t have a lot of people [in office] who are still in front of students, working inside of schools, who know this because they live it every day,” says Wilson. “That gave me the nudge to go over the line: ‘I’ve gotta step up.’”

Sarah Marzilli is an elementary school art teacher who was running for a seat on the school board in Volusia County, Florida, but recently lost her primary. She feels that, with the pace of change in schools today — from social media and cellphone use to the growing challenges around mental health — school boards need representation from current educators.

“We need to make sure we have someone who’s in the trenches, so to speak,” Marzilli says, “not an outsider looking in on it.”

Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell, a longtime Spanish teacher and current substitute teacher who is running for a seat in the Kentucky state legislature, notes that because a lot of legislators are lawyers, they can have unrealistic expectations about how quickly change happens in education.

“When they talk about education, they talk as if you can snap your fingers and have something done,” Cottrell says. “As teachers, we know the amount of time it takes. We know more about the initiatives that look good on paper but won’t actually move the needle. … We’re results-driven.”

While tuning in to a recent public committee hearing about the growing population of English language learners in Kentucky schools, Cottrell was appalled by committee members’ ignorance about basic education codes. “I wanted to jump through the screen,” she recalls. “No one knows what they’re talking about. … They’re not even asking the right questions.”

Susie Hedalen is currently the superintendent of Montana’s Townsend Public School District and running to be Montana’s next superintendent of public instruction. Hedalen has worked as a teacher, a principal and a superintendent at districts of varying sizes in Montana.

“I’m living it every day,” Hedalen says. “I know what our challenges are. I know what school leaders feel like they need and how the state could support leaders as well as teachers. I get to work with students and families every day and really have a pulse on what’s happening in education in Montana right now.”

A Bevy of Transferable Skills

Educators tend to possess a set of skills that lend themselves well to public office, many people pointed out.

For one, teachers are often effective communicators to different audiences, be it students, families or administrators. They can communicate well one-on-one but also to large groups.

Teachers are practiced decision-makers, too.

“They make a lot of hard decisions every single day,” Siegel-Stechler says. “Alone in a class with 20 to 30 kids, they have to be able to make good decisions on the fly.”

Educators are often good listeners. They are trusted members in their communities. They get along well with people who have a range of personalities and opinions. They have a certain comfort level with public speaking. And they tend to be disciplined. Those are all qualities that came up during interviews.

Educators are usually empathetic too, Collins says, noting that empathy is a quality missing from our politics today.

“In order to be an effective teacher, you have to be able to empathize with students — not judge them based on preconceived ideas, understand the humanity and dignity of each child and how to maximize their potential,” he says.

Educators Take a Seat at the Table

The two candidates who are running for seats in their state legislatures — Cottrell from Kentucky and Safiyah Jackson from North Carolina — both noted that the electoral system is stacked against people like them.

“If you’re an educator with educator friends, or a Black woman with Black friends, it makes fundraising very difficult,” says Jackson, an early childhood advocate and chief strategy officer at the North Carolina Partnership for Children. “If you’re a lawyer with lawyer friends, bam. It’s a system designed to deliver exactly as it’s delivering.”

It takes a lot of time and money and social connections to run and win a campaign, Cottrell says. That’s not very practical if you’re a full-time employee earning regular wages.

“I would love to see more teachers run for office and be empowered to do that,” Cottrell says, “but that’s really, really difficult under the work burden they have.” (Cottrell is not teaching full-time right now.)

The result, she says, is a body of legislators that does not include many people with “boots on the ground, who are getting their hands dirty in the work.”

Cottrell understands that not every educator can or wants to run for office. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be involved in the process of politics in some way. They might consider alternatives like asking to testify before a committee or offering to work with their representatives on legislation pertaining to education.

“The more teachers are involved in the process, the better relationship there will be between the statehouse and schools,” Cottrell says. “That can only benefit the kids.”

© Frame Stock Footage / Shutterstock

As someone who views cooking and baking as hobbies, not chores, I follow a lot of food bloggers and recipe developers on social media. I subscribe to many of their newsletters. I, well, make and eat a lot of their food.

Yet I’ve only come across one who devotes back-to-school season to easing the financial burden on educators.

Deb Perelman, the best-selling author and food blogger behind Smitten Kitchen, has been running the Classroom Wishlist Project for three years now. Each summer, she creates a post on her Instagram account (1.8 million followers) welcoming teachers to share their school supply lists, along with a bit of humanizing information like where they live and what they teach, in a Google form.

Then Perelman puts their responses in a spreadsheet, which as of mid-August has over 730 entries for the 2024-25 school year, and invites her expansive reader community to visit a teacher’s wish list and purchase what they can so that these educators don’t have to pay out of their pockets.

The average teacher, according to the nonprofit DonorsChoose, spends close to $700 of their own money on classroom supplies in a given year — a reality that “feels all wrong and makes me sad,” Perelman says in the Classroom Wishlist Project description.

The famous food writer lives in Manhattan and has children entering fourth and 10th grade this year. There are all sorts of causes and issues she could support. Why, I wondered, did she choose this one?

I recently got to ask Perelman that myself, along with other questions — like what has most surprised her about the endeavor and what recipe on her site most says “back to school.”

She is quick to note that the wish list project, which she finds gratifying and heartening, does not require major sacrifice on her part.

“I almost feel guilty, sometimes, about what a low lift this project is for me,” she admits. “I would do it if it was harder, [but] I feel like I have to be honest — I'm not sweating over this.”

She adds: “It's more a reflection of the generosity of the community, and the kindness. This is not about me doing anything special. I'm really just using a space I've already created to bounce the light back to people who need it.”

The following interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

EdSurge: When and how did the Classroom Wishlist Project first begin?

Deb Perelman: This is the third summer, so I guess that means that it began in — what year is this? — 2022.

A reader messaged me, and she said her daughter was a school teacher, and [the school] had given her no budget for classroom supplies. She asked: Would I mind sharing her classroom wish list with my readers and getting the word out?

It feels good. I think everybody wins. I love the idea of supporting teachers.

— Deb Perelman

And when I did, they wiped out her wish list in, I feel like, under a day. The generosity was just staggering. And I heard from a lot of other teachers who asked if I could help them, too. I thought, ‘Yes, why not? Let's just do this.’

The first summer, it was not the most organized. Like, people would [direct message] me their list, and I would share it in a spreadsheet. By the second summer, which was last summer, I knew I was going to do this as a project, hopefully every year.

I created a Google Form where teachers could submit their list, and asked them to tell us a little bit about their classroom and to tell us what city they’re in. I think that helps a lot because sometimes you might read, like, ‘Oh, it's a music classroom. I love music,’ or, ‘Oh, that's my town.’ So it's more meaningful for people to have a little more information when there are so many [lists].

Doing it that way, we got a lot, a lot, a lot more submissions — like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. And I worried — and I still worry — that we get too many submissions to make any meaningful difference. If it's 20 lists, we're going to wipe them out. But I can't promise that for 900 lists at all — or even close.

But the thing I forget is that, if you need stuff and a stranger sends you even a quarter of it or one [item], it still just completely makes your day. Whether you just got the crayons or just got 10 books, it doesn't matter. There's no way it's not well received, even if it's not everything people need.

Photo courtesy of Deb Perelman

I imagine people receiving and giving appreciate the humanity of it.

Yeah, I think it feels good on both sides. And I think it feels really fun to buy books and crayons for classrooms. I love buying school supplies.

I have two kids, and they're both in public school. When they first started in their elementary school, we would get [a list] from the teachers at the beginning of the year, ‘Here's some stuff we could use for the classroom, bring it in if you can.’ And then, as the fundraising improved at the public school, the PTA was able to bring in more money. We no longer have to buy any school supplies at all, and it really is such a privilege. I mean, we don't even buy a single box of crayons. It's just — it's crazy.

We got very lucky. … And like I said, I think it's so fun to buy crayons and books and whatever for a classroom. It feels really good.

That's a very organic start. Do you often get reader emails of people asking for you to support a cause?

Not as often as I would expect, but maybe I'm not that on top of my email.

Photo courtesy of Deb Perelman

One of the dark Smitten Kitchen secrets is that I have no staff, just sort of a very, very, very part-time assistant. I'm just like a do-it-myself person, which is good and bad. So I wouldn't say this happens a ton, but I liked this one. It feels good. I think everybody wins. I love the idea of supporting teachers.

The things that these teachers need are often so basic. These are small, inexpensive purchases that can really make somebody’s day. And then I get these lovely notes back from them. It’s just the joy, the incandescent joy, from people who walk into their classroom and find that a complete stranger bought all the glue they needed for the year. Or somebody sent me this picture of — it must be 50 books for her classroom. Somebody bought basically every book on her list, and she walked into her classroom and it was there.

How do the teachers find you? Are they often readers in your online community?

Usually. I mostly do the shoutout through Instagram, where I have my largest social community. I have a website too, but I almost try to funnel it down a little bit. It's either somebody who reads the site, or it might be their kid or their friend. I was trying to keep it from being too wide and too open on the internet, because otherwise we'll just get 10,000 wish lists and nothing will get filled.

But I also like the idea, if I can get a part-time staff person next summer, of trying to expand it a little bit more. Like maybe I can get some people to sponsor or match wish list clearing. I just don't have, personally, the bandwidth to dig into that right now.

Is there any teacher this year or in past years whose story stands out to you?

Oh, my goodness, there have been so many.

I remember last summer, after the wildfires in Hawaii, there were people who were looking specifically for the lists from those teachers [on Maui].

Especially when there's been some sort of tragedy or weather disaster, and it's been in the news and teachers don't even know how they're going to start their school year, I think there's definitely a lot of focus on that. There's definitely an interest in helping in such a specific way — where what you're doing is going to directly affect a kid's education and how their year goes. It feels like the most satisfying giving in that way.

Is there a request that has been especially frequent or something that surprises you when you look through these wish lists?

I think the thing that [is most surprising] is just that so much of how a school thrives depends on the way we do funding. And I am not a national expert on education in any way … but so much of it comes from crowdsourced fundraising and not out of the money schools get from the state for students.

In a lot of places, parents don't have extra money to give. And then there's other places where parents are writing $500 checks or more to the PTA every year, and it's just crazy how much that changes a kid's education.

If you're in an area where parents don't have deep pockets and a lot of spare change, why should the kids' classrooms not have what they need? Why should that affect whether they have enough crayons? It's wild when you think of it that way.

That's what's been eye-opening for me. I've also heard from so many retired teachers and older teachers who are like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I must have spent $2,000 a year from my own paycheck. This is so nice that people want to help out.’ People don't see this money that the teachers are spending. It's invisible.

Do you measure success by dollars raised or wish lists cleared, or are you measuring it at all?

I'm actually not measuring it at all. … I do use the thank you notes as a good measure of how it's being received and the joy. You can always just see the joy.

Final question: What recipe on your website is the most quintessential ‘back to school’ recipe?

I think homemade Oreos have got to be it, right? I mean, of course. It's either going to be grilled cheese and tomato soup — a kid-friendly meal — or it's going to be homemade Oreos. They’re really easy: It’s like two chocolate sugar cookies with vanilla in them. They’re really fun.

© Anna Bova / Shutterstock

For the past couple of years, unrelenting change has come fast.

Even while schools are stuck dealing with deep challenges, COVID-19 pandemic relief funding is running its course. Meanwhile, new technologies seem to flow out in an unstoppable stream. These often have consequences in education, from an increase in cheating on assignments enabled by prose-spewing chatbots, to experiments that bring AI into classrooms as teaching assistants or even as students.

For some teachers and school leaders, it can feel like an onslaught.

Some educators connect AI to broader changes that they perceive have been harmful to students, says Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education. Through interviews, she’s found that some educators link AI to social media and cellphones. So they’re having an understandably emotional response, she adds: “It’s kinda scary if you think about it too long.”

But in this ever-shifting stream of change, Lake is among those who believe new technology can be steered in a way that navigates schools to a more promising channel for reducing disparities in education in the U.S.

However, if that’s going to happen, it’s imperative that education leaders start pushing AI to transform teaching and learning in ways that are beneficial, particularly for low-income and historically disadvantaged students, observers like Lake argue.

If artificial intelligence doesn’t help solve disparities, advocates worry, it will worsen them.

Hazard Lights

AI has been used in education since at least the 1970s. But the recent barrage of technology has coincided with a more intense spotlight on disparities in student outcomes, fueled by the pandemic and social movements such as protests over the killing of George Floyd. AI has fed hopes of reaching more equality thanks to its promise to increase personalized learning and to boost efficiency and sustainability for an overworked teaching force.

In late 2022, the White House released a “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights,” hoping that it would strengthen privacy rights. And last year, the U.S. Department of Education, along with the nonprofit Digital Promise, weighed in with recommendations for making sure this technology can be used “responsibly” in education to increase equity and support overburdened teachers.

If you ask some researchers, though, it’s not enough.

There have been fears that AI will accidentally magnify biases either by relying on algorithms that are trained on biased data, or by other methods such as automating assessments that ignore student experiences even while sorting them into different learning paths.

Now, some early data suggests that AI could indeed widen disparities. For instance: Lake’s organization, a national research and policy center that’s associated with Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, released a report this spring that looked at K-12 teachers’ use of virtual learning platforms, adaptive learning systems and chatbots. The report, a collaboration with the RAND Corporation, found that educators working in suburban schools already profess to having more experience with and training for AI than those in urban or rural schools.

The report also found that teachers in schools where more than half of students are Black, Hispanic, Asian, Pacific Islander or Native American had more experience using the tools — but less training — than teachers who work in majority-white schools.

If suburban students — on average, wealthier than urban or rural students — are receiving more preparation for the complexities of an AI-influenced world, it opens up really big existential questions, Lake says.

Big Promises — or Problems

So how can advocates push AI to deliver on its promise of serving all students?

It wouldn’t be responsible to lean on AI as the quick fix for all our economic shortages in schooling.

— Rina Bliss

It’s all about strategy right now, making smart investments and setting down smart policy, Lake says.

Another report from the Center on Reinventing Public Education calls for more work to engage states on effective testing and implementation in their schools, and for the federal government to put more detailed guardrails and guidance in place. The report, “Wicked Opportunities,” also calls for more investment into research and development. From its perspective, the worst outcome would be to leave districts to fend for themselves when it comes to AI.

Part of the reason urban districts are less prepared for AI may be complexity and the sheer number of issues they are facing, observers speculate. Superintendents in urban districts say they are overwhelmed, Lake says. She explains that while they may be excited by the opportunities of AI, superintendents are busy handling immediate problems: pandemic recovery, the end of federal relief funding, enrollment declines and potential school closures, mental health crises among students and absenteeism. What these leaders want is evidence that suggests which tools actually work, as well as help navigating edtech tools and training their teachers, she adds.

But other observers worry about whether AI is truly the answer for solving structural problems in schools broadly.

Introducing more AI to classrooms, at least in the short term, implies teaching students using screens and virtual learning, argues Rina Bliss, an associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University. But many students are already getting too much screen and online time at home, she says. It degrades their mental health and their ability to work through assignments, and educators should be cautious about adding more screen time or virtual learning, Bliss says.

Bliss also points to a “print advantage,” a bump in how much is learned from print materials compared to screens, which has to do with factors like engagement with the text and how quickly a student’s eyes can lock onto and stay focused on material. In her view, digital texts, especially when they are connected to the internet, are “pots of distractions,” and increasing screen-based instruction can actually disadvantage students.

Ultimately, she adds, an approach to instruction that overrelies on AI could reinforce inequality. It’s possible that these tools are setting up a tiered system, where affluent students attend schools that emphasize hands-on learning experiences while other schools increasingly depend on screens and virtual learning. These tools shouldn’t replace real-world learning, particularly in under-resourced schools, she adds. She worries that excessive reliance on this technology could create an “underclass of students” who are given artificial stopgaps to big problems like school understaffing and underfunding. It wouldn’t be responsible to lean on AI as the quick fix for all our economic shortages in schooling, Bliss argues.

So how should educators approach AI? Perhaps the correct posture is cautious hope and deliberate planning.

Nobody knows precisely how AI will impact education yet, argues Lake, of CRPE. It is not a panacea, but in her estimation there’s a real opportunity to use it to close learning gaps. So it’s important to craft plans to deliver on the potential: “A lot of people freeze when it comes to AI, and if they can instead think about what they want for their kids, their schools, and whether AI can help, that seems like a productive path to me, and a much more manageable one,” Lake says.

There’s nothing wrong with being hopeful, she adds.

© Photo By Ground Picture/ Shutterstock

This story was originally published by The Daily Yonder.

Chris Nelson teaches preschool in rural Vermont, just a few miles from the Canadian border, but not in the school or child care center most people think of when they imagine state or locally funded pre-K. Instead, her 3- and 4-year-old students are integrated into her five-star-rated home-based child care program, where she also cares for younger children and a few kids who come after school until their working parents pick them up.

Many of those parents would have to drive more than an hour to reach a center- or school-based pre-K program where the state covers tuition for just 10 hours a week. In contrast, Nelson’s program is open 12 hours a day to cover parents’ commutes, the nontraditional hours of shift workers and those who do seasonal work.

Nelson would like to continue teaching pre-K, and parents of those children would like to receive the state’s $3,800 free tuition for enrolling in Nelson’s program. However, new recommendations from Vermont’s School Board Insurance Trust (VSBIT), which insures schools and preschool programs, effectively exclude home-based providers from participation, because the $2 million insurance policy they recommend (based on school district needs) isn’t even available to home-based child care providers, sometimes also called family child care providers or FCCs. Nelson brought the problem to the attention of state child care regulators. In a memo released in mid-June to school district superintendents, Vermont Agencies of Education and Human Services indicate that local departments of education can waive the insurance requirement for home-based pre-K programs that are unable or cannot afford to secure the policy recommended by VSBIT. Because this policy change has come so late, just two months before the 2024 school year begins, when most districts have already made decisions about partnerships with private pre-K providers, it remains to be seen how many home-based child care providers will be able to offer pre-K this year.

Vermont, like many states, is committed to a mixed-delivery model for pre-K education, allowing the state’s pre-K tuition subsidy to be applied for programs in a variety of existing settings, including those based in homes. Nevertheless, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) State of Preschool 2023 Yearbook, in 2022-2023, more than 60 percent of pre-K children served were in public school settings, not private programs or home-based child care options. Together, all of those programs served just 44 percent of eligible 4-year-olds and 17 percent of 3-year-olds. More than half of all 3- and 4-year-old children still do not attend preschool. For many rural families especially, the barriers of paying for and getting their children to a pre-K program are just too great.

Creating “universal” access to high-quality pre-K will require a massive, long-term public investment (as much as $33 billion, according to NIEER). In the near term, states can increase access by leveraging the existing infrastructure for providing pre-K in the home-based programs that already serve many rural families. Policy experts like The Erikson Institute and NIEER recommend “meaningfully” including and supporting home-based child care providers in the expansion and implementation of publicly funded pre-K as a promising first step to increasing access, especially in states where more than 50 percent of the population lives in a child care desert. A new initiative led by Home Grown, a national funder collaborative focused on improving the quality of and access to home-based child care, in partnership with NIEER, would support state, city, county and tribal government leaders to include home-based child care in their pre-K programs.

States’ commitment to a mixed-delivery model often falters in part because many, like Vermont, have a governance structure that reinforces a tendency to see pre-K as just an additional grade before kindergarten, with regulations and funding that follow the template of elementary education. These include layers of requirements for teacher licensure, classroom environments and administrative oversight. Meanwhile, home-based child care is overseen by the department of social services, with different parameters for licensure and oversight. Former state Rep. Ashton Clemmons, who co-chaired the early childhood caucus in North Carolina’s General Assembly, notes that this “disalignment” works to segregate infant-toddler caregivers from those who teach pre-K.

“If you give parents a voucher and let them go where they want to, many parents would choose FCCs for pre-K as well as care for their infants and toddlers,” says Rachel Bymun, a licensed home-based child care provider in Bay Point, California, a low-income, primarily immigrant community an hour from San Francisco. She notes that although California also subscribes to a mixed-delivery model, her county does not have the Family Child Care Home Education Network that would enable home-based child care providers like her to participate in California’s subsidized pre-K program. As a result, families in her county who wish to access publicly funded pre-K have to leave her program and enroll in another setting.

The families who prefer a home-based child care environment often are the most underserved and hard to reach, including families of color, those in rural communities, those who speak languages other than English, and those who work nontraditional hours, according to Alexandra Patterson, director of policy and strategy at Home Grown, a national collaborative of funders supporting home-based child care: “Excluding these providers from the formal pre-K system further marginalizes the families and providers who most need those resources.”

Another significant barrier to access is that working parents need more than two to six hours of care per day for 180 days a year, which is the typical pre-K school year. Many eligible working parents struggle to get multiple children of different ages to different schools or can’t find a preschool with an open slot that is also within commuting distance from their work and home. Home-based pre-K, on the other hand, is typically integrated into a comprehensive child care program serving multiple children of mixed ages that is open all day and year-round. This family-like setting, according to this report from The Erikson Institute, provides continuity and stability for children, culturally and linguistically responsive care, individualized education, and fosters the community connections and relationships that families rely on for support from each other and their child’s teacher.

Nelson’s nature-based, play-based approach to learning in a small, mixed-age group is a strength of home-based pre-K that many parents prefer to hectic classrooms full of 20 or 30 4-year-olds.

“Schools mandate 275 days a year for learning,” she says, “but I believe every single minute is a teachable moment. On a typical day, we might visit the pond to collect tadpoles and bring them back so that children can learn about life cycles. The two-year-olds might want to feel the little jelly eggs, and the older ones will see that the eggs grow legs and tails and grow into frogs.”

This approach is also endorsed by the National Academies New Vision for High Quality Preschool Curriculum. The “Magic 8” preschool classroom practices, according to child development researchers, include precisely the practices FCCs implement daily in their homes: lots of listening to children, holistic sequential activities, cooperative interactions between kids, and minimal time spent in transition from one space to another or between lessons. These videos from Home Grown feature home-based child care providers demonstrating these practices as they teach and care for mixed-age groups of children.

How could publicly funded pre-K programs enroll more children and accommodate the needs of more families? NIEER’s recent report and recommendations from the Erikson Institute on pay equity and support for providers detail strategies for setting pre-K reimbursement rates to reflect the true cost of providing high-quality pre-K services in a home-based child care setting. These include supporting home-based providers with educational, coaching and evaluation programs specific to preschool standards, setting environmental recommendations and the ratio of infants to toddlers allowed under a caregiver’s license appropriately for home-based settings. Changes like these would allow Nelson and other home-based child care providers to sustain their programs and open their doors to 3- and 4-year-olds who are waiting in the wings for school to start. This solution also builds on and strengthens the existing capacity of FCC educators, buttressing states’ workforces and economies in both the short and long terms.

What’s more, this solution doesn’t require building new preschool wings onto aging school buildings or training up a new cadre of preschool teachers. What it does require, says Patterson, is an “innovative and inclusive view of family child care homes as centers of learning, and of qualified caregivers who operate them as early childhood educators,” that is, pre-K teachers deserving of all the same support and salary afforded to school- or center-based pre-K programs.

© noBorders - Brayden Howie / Shutterstock

What if why you choose to become a teacher determines how successful you will be in the role?

Society has always been fascinated to learn about the motivations of famous athletes, entertainers, and politicians and how they came to their profession. We think about their career trajectory and consider its relevance to ourselves or people we know. What if, similarly, we learned about the motivations of aspiring K-12 teachers, and used that to predict how effective they will be and how long they will stay in the classroom?

Persistent concerns reiterate teacher shortages throughout the nation. Recent evidence has also pointed to declining interest in becoming a teacher, aligned with the decreased professionalization, prestige and pay of the sector. Yet noble individuals press forward and choose to educate our children anyway. Why, in spite of the headwinds, do they become teachers?

As professors and researchers in university teaching and learning programs, we’re fascinated by this question. We figured that learning more about teacher motivation could help us better understand teacher pipelines and find ways to diversify and improve the quality of our nation’s teachers, so we designed a study to gather more information.

From 2012-2018, nearly 2,800 preservice teachers within one of the largest teacher preparation programs in Texas responded to an essay prompt, “Explain why you decided to become a teacher.” We used a natural language processing algorithm to review their responses.

Historically, people went into teaching for relatively straightforward reasons: They desired a stable career, enjoyed having summers off, or had family members who were teachers. However, across the essay responses, we found that those motivations were not the most prevalent, nor were they related to teacher outcomes — but others were.

Studying Preservice Teacher Motivations

Previously, researchers have primarily looked at in-service teacher motivations. Rather than learning from someone who is already in the profession, we wanted to learn from those who have yet to enter the profession. This better informs our understanding of how to get someone interested in teaching to then aid recruitment.

Using machine learning to process the thousands of open-ended essay responses, we identified 10 broad reasons for why preservice teachers want to become teachers.

The two most frequent drivers were altruism (the desire to do selfless good) and intrinsic motivation (an enjoyment of teaching, helping or interacting with students or children). Other interesting but less frequently cited motivations include the impact of prior teachers, love of a content area, and a family connection to teaching.

Interestingly, motivations differed by preservice teachers’ characteristics, such as race and ethnicity, gender, family income and certification.

For instance, individuals seeking their elementary certification were more likely to enjoy working with children, whereas middle and high school preservice teachers were interested in teaching a particular content area. Relatedly, men were less likely than women to report that they had “always wanted to teach.” This suggests that background characteristics can shape motivations to become a teacher.

Further, and more importantly, we found that some teacher motivations were related to better teacher outcomes. While altruism was the most frequent answer given, it wasn’t the one most strongly correlated with effectiveness.

Specifically, preservice teachers who shared that they were intrinsically motivated to teach and had experienced some adversity within schools were found to be both more effective educators and less likely to leave the classroom prematurely. Individuals who had these two motivating factors had a significant and positive correlation with their clinical teaching observation scores, and were less likely to leave the K-12 public school system within their first several years of entry.

Though these were modest effects, the fact that written self-reports of teaching motivation had even some significance with these outcomes is noteworthy. Motivations are no longer just interesting; they can be consequential.

From Motivations to Marketing

By better understanding teacher motivations, we can learn more about who could succeed in the profession. More precisely, we want to find individuals who are intrinsically motivated to teach or have overcome adversity within education spaces.

These future teachers could be like the following study participant who expressed how adversity and the impact of prior teachers motivated them to become a teacher:

“The statistics are stacked against someone with my background. Living in an impoverished neighborhood and struggling to learn English as my second language, and a daughter of Mexican immigrant parents who didn’t even get to finish primary school … I was fortunate to have many teachers who became my role models … I want to pay forward what my teachers did for me.”

How can we get these kinds of people into the classroom?

First, states need to consider long-term solutions to teacher shortages, including finding and nudging motivated individuals into educator preparation programs. Policymakers could invest in early teaching opportunities such as tutoring programs or summer programs with an explicit design to encourage individuals to consider careers in education and teaching (consider Breakthrough Collaborative as an example).

Second, teacher preparation programs need to prioritize strategic marketing, particularly in places where intrinsic motivation for teaching occurs more naturally (think: high schools, college campuses and child care centers).

Third, school districts could consider teacher motivations as part of their hiring process. Considering all else equal, it may be worth gaining insight into applicants’ interest in teaching, since our research indicates some motivations lead to more effective and longer tenured teachers than others.

Through these recommendations, classrooms across the nation can begin to utilize teacher motivations to enhance student learning.

© Jacob Lund / Shutterstock

Tiaja Gundy was just 19 years old when she started working at Federal Hill House, an early learning center in Providence, Rhode Island. It was 2016, and back then, she lacked experience and expertise working with young children. She had no intention of staying in the field long-term.

This story also appeared in The 19th.

But the work grew on her. Gundy started out as a “floater,” helping with infants, toddlers and preschoolers as needed. She found she loved being around children.

As years passed, Gundy gained experience, and she moved into an assistant teaching position in a toddler classroom. Yet she was still missing some of the critical knowledge about child development that would allow her to continue growing in her career.

In 2021, Gundy recalls, one of her supervisors pulled her aside, and said, “You’re very promising. I know you can go farther in this field,” then told her about an interesting opportunity.

Rhode Island was launching a registered apprenticeship program for early childhood educators. With her employer’s support, Gundy would get to continue her paid teaching job as she took college courses, pursuing a Child Development Associate (CDA), a nationally recognized credential for those who work in early care and education settings. It would set her up to one day become a lead teacher. The apprenticeship would come with guaranteed wage increases, too.

Tiaja Gundy, a toddler teacher in Providence, Rhode Island.

The thought of balancing both work and school again was daunting, Gundy admits, but she was encouraged by her colleagues and excited to deepen her understanding of early childhood education. She decided to apply.

For decades, apprenticeship has been a popular career pathway for occupations such as electricians, plumbers and carpenters. In early care and education, however, there was limited uptake of the model.

Recently, that has changed — and fast. A decade ago, only a handful of states had registered apprenticeship programs in early childhood education. Five years ago, that had risen to about a dozen. As of last year, 35 states had an apprenticeship program for child care and early childhood education, and another seven states were developing them, according to a report published by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC).

In 2021, the last year for which there is available data, early childhood education was one of the five fastest-growing occupations for apprenticeship, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

“There’s just been an explosion,” says Linda Smith, who authored the BPC’s apprenticeship report last summer and has since joined the Buffett Early Childhood Institute as director of policy. “It is happening all over this country.”

Explaining the ‘Explosion’

Smith sees at least two reasons for the emergence and rapid growth of this model in early childhood education.

The first is that more federal funding has become available in recent years. At least 10 states are using American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars to build or expand their child care apprenticeship programs, and 13 are using Preschool Development Grant Birth Through Five funds. As many as 15 states are using money from the Child Care and Development Fund, which received a $15 billion boost under ARPA.

The second reason is that there is increased awareness of how essential and how endangered the early care and education sector is.

“We’re in a tough spot right now with child care in this country,” Smith says soberly. “We have a workforce problem on our hands. Everyone is crying for child care workers. They can’t fill jobs. Wages are low. Child care programs can’t compete with big box stores, fast food, you name it.”

Broad recognition of that reality, Smith says, made policymakers and other leaders more willing to invest in the early education workforce.

It also helps, she adds, that people understand what apprenticeships are. It’s a well-established model that they can visualize and — importantly — measure.

From day one, an apprentice is a W-2 employee. There is no such thing as an unpaid apprentice.

— Randi Wolfe

Randi Wolfe, founder and executive director of Early Care and Education Pathways to Success (ECEPTS), an organization that provides training and technical assistance to get programs registered as apprenticeships, believes this model is proliferating in early care and education because it’s a natural fit for the field’s workforce development needs.

The early care and education workforce, Wolfe points out, is mostly made up of low-income women, and they are disproportionately women of color, immigrants, non-native English speakers and first-generation college students.

“Asking those people to do an internship that is unpaid creates unintended inequity,” Wolfe says. “From day one, an apprentice is a W-2 employee. There is no such thing as an unpaid apprentice.”

It works well for both educators and early learning programs, she adds. Early childhood educators who can’t afford to miss out on wages while they earn a degree get to do both at the same time — and at little or no cost. They get raises throughout the apprenticeship and, in many cases, are eligible for a promotion once they complete it.

Their employers, meanwhile, end up with highly skilled teachers who, after investing significant time and energy into their careers, are more likely to remain in the field.

“They’re the best qualified candidate,” Wolfe says of apprentices. “You’ve trained them. You’ve grown them.”

For early learning programs, better-qualified teachers can also help them move up the scale on their state’s quality rating system. Higher quality ratings are tied to higher subsidy reimbursement rates in many states. In short, apprentices help a program’s bottom line.

All of these outcomes support children and families, who benefit greatly from having teachers who provide high-quality, research-backed care and education.

The Nuts and Bolts of Apprenticeships

To be considered a “registered” apprenticeship, programs must meet a number of criteria and get approval from the U.S. Department of Labor or a state apprenticeship agency. All registered apprenticeships have a sponsor, such as a community-based organization, a workforce intermediary or a business, that manages program operations. Registered apprenticeship programs have a few other key ingredients:

• Employers must partner with apprentices, allowing them to learn while they earn. In early care and education, the employers are early learning programs.
• Apprentices must receive on-the-job training with opportunities to practice their new skills in context. Many programs pair apprentices with a mentor to fulfill this goal.
• Apprentices must receive instruction related to their industry. In early care and education, that happens in a classroom setting, often at a community college but at four-year institutions too. Employers are expected to provide support and flexibility so apprentices can attend classes and complete coursework.
• Apprentices are guaranteed incremental wage increases as their knowledge and skills grow. This is a huge win for early educators, who have some of the lowest wages in the country, but also a point of tension for programs, which are seldom in a financial position to pay staff more.
• Apprentices must receive a credential. In early education, that is usually a CDA or an associate degree, and sometimes a bachelor’s degree.

Despite the many criteria, there is still some flexibility for individual apprenticeship programs to put their own spin on the model.

In Rhode Island, where Gundy apprenticed, the program is exclusively for infant and toddler teachers, often the “least educated and least compensated” faction of the early childhood workforce, says Lisa Hildebrand, executive director of the Rhode Island Association for the Education of Young Children, which helped develop and implement the program, in partnership with a state agency, and now manages it.

There is a notion in the field, Hildebrand says, that if you start out as an infant or toddler teacher, you can get more training and education and then “move up” to teaching preschool.

“It’s almost like a promotion,” she says, because preschool teachers typically earn more money and command more respect.

But that dynamic leads to the high turnover of infant and toddler teachers, which, given the challenges many programs already face with hiring and retention, and the legal requirements around staff-to-child ratios, can result in classroom closures and reduced slots for the youngest children. It certainly has in Rhode Island.

“The waiting list for infants and toddlers is absolutely astronomical,” Hildebrand says, acknowledging that’s true outside of Rhode Island too. “It is reaching critical levels at this point.”

With additional funding on the way, the apprenticeship may soon expand to preschool teachers, among whom there is ample interest, Hildebrand notes. But right now, Rhode Island is focused on retaining the teachers who are in the highest demand.

Minnesota’s registered apprenticeship program, which launched in summer 2023, includes a strong mentorship component. Each apprentice is paired with a mentor, often a colleague at the program where they work, says Erin Young, who manages the program for Child Care Aware of Minnesota.

“That’s the secret sauce,” says Young. “That’s the magic.”

Mentors, who receive 24 hours of free training, guide apprentices through questions and topics ranging from children’s behavioral challenges, to curriculum implementation, to family engagement. That can be especially helpful for apprentices who are still quite new to the field of early childhood education, Young explains.

“It’s nice to have someone say, ‘It’s OK.’ ‘Try this.’ ‘Start here,’” Young says. “Having a mentor at the beginning of my early childhood career would’ve been a huge help.”

The mentorship made an impression on Katelyn Sarkar, an apprentice who graduated with her bachelor’s degree in early childhood education leadership in June.

Katelyn Sarkar, a lead teacher and early childhood apprentice in Rochester, Minnesota, reads a book in her Head Start classroom. Photo courtesy of Sarkar.

Sarkar’s mentor would observe her in her classroom at a Head Start program in Rochester, Minnesota, then offer feedback and suggest strategies for her to try. “As an early childhood educator, I grew so much more in my skills because of that,” Sarkar shares.

Next up, Young is developing an apprenticeship model for licensed family child care providers, a group that is currently left out of most registered apprenticeship programs, despite being the “dominant form of care in rural Minnesota,” Young says, and an option preferred by many families.

“If it gets approved, that’s a really big win,” Young notes. “It opens the door for other states to do it.”

No Such Thing as a Silver Bullet

Although many early childhood advocates view the apprenticeship model as a promising strategy for workforce retention and improvement, they’re also quick to caution against overweighting its potential.

In early childhood, we tend to [want] a single solution to a complex problem. That does not work. ... Apprenticeships are never going to be the only answer.

— Linda Smith

“In early childhood, we tend to [want] a single solution to a complex problem. That does not work. The problems of child care in this country are very complicated,” says Smith of the Buffett Early Childhood Institute. “Apprenticeships are never going to be the only answer.”

The model, while exciting, has its limitations, Smith adds.

Right now, apprenticeship cohorts tend to be quite small, with around five to 25 early childhood educators enrolled. Rhode Island graduated 16 apprentices in its pilot cohort and has another 17 enrolled now. Minnesota had 19 apprentices enrolled as of June.

That’s because apprenticeship programs are demanding, resource-intensive and very costly.

In Minnesota, for example, where early childhood apprenticeship costs fall on the high end, Young budgets $20,000 to $24,000 per apprentice per year. Apprenticeships there run for at least two years, she says.

That estimate includes covering 85 percent of the cost of college tuition and books, as well as giving apprentices an annual $2,000 stipend to help with transportation, internet access and their remaining 10 percent of tuition costs, and awarding them a small bonus at the end of their apprenticeship year.

It also includes an annual $5,000 stipend to employers to offset the costs of hosting an apprentice. In Minnesota, employers chip in the final 5 percent of tuition costs, and they are expected to give apprentices a $1 an hour raise at the end of each year, which typically works out to be about $2,000 a year, Young says. It can be hard for employers to budget for that right away, she notes. Mentors also receive a $3,500 annual stipend.

It’s expensive, to be sure, but Minnesota recently received $5 million from the state earmarked specifically for apprenticeships, Young says.

“There’s not going to be one silver bullet,” Young acknowledges, “but professionalizing the field, reducing turnover and increasing compensation is going to have to happen, and I am hoping the data will show this is one positive strategy that moves the needle on that.”

Now 27 and finished with her apprenticeship, Gundy has received her CDA and been promoted to lead teacher in her toddler classroom. She’s also pursuing her bachelor’s degree in early childhood education.

“It was nice to get the science behind what I did,” Gundy shares about her apprenticeship experience. “It answered ‘why’ — why are we doing it this way, why is play important. … It helped me be an overall better teacher.”

© Photo courtesy of Katelyn Sarkar

As a school counselor, Leighanne Mainguy can never be sure what’s in store for her each day.

Some days, she arrives at her elementary school to learn that a student is in crisis and needs her full attention; she’ll clear her schedule. Occasionally, a tragedy in the community will leave students and staff shaken, and Mainguy will move swiftly to lend support.

The job can be heavy and hard. With so many young people today facing mental health challenges, such as anxiety, depression and stress, school counselors are in high demand. Yet their capacity is limited: School counselors in the U.S. have an average caseload of 385 students, based on the latest data available. (Mainguy’s caseload is slightly better than that, and the American School Counselor Association recommends a ratio of one counselor to 250 students.)

But the job also comes with regular doses of levity, joy and laughter — moments that Mainguy describes as “soul building.”

Every week, a student may interact with dozens of adults in their school, from counselors to custodians, bus drivers to paraprofessionals, food service workers to school nurses. These individuals are integral to a school community but rarely as visible as, say, teachers and principals.

In a new series, “Role Call,” EdSurge is elevating the experiences of the myriad school staff members who help shape the day for kids. This month, we’re featuring school counselor Leighanne Mainguy, who shares how she came into this work, what people get wrong about it, and what she wishes she could change.

The following interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

---

Name: Leighanne Mainguy

Age: 49

Location: Las Vegas, Nevada

Role: School counselor

Current age group: PreK-5

Years in the field: 12

---

EdSurge: How did you get here? What brought you to this role?

Leighanne Mainguy: So I didn't start counseling until I was 38. I've always been a helper by nature. When I was a kid, I found a lot of joy in that. When I went to college, right out of high school, I got my degree in psychology and knew I wanted to do something in that realm, but circumstances didn't allow for that for quite some time.

For years, I was helping my husband through college, and we were having kids. We were living in Michigan, and I had a good job working in corporate America. Then we moved to Nevada, and with my husband’s support, I started a master’s program. In most states, you have to have your master’s degree to work as a school counselor.

I could have been a mental health professional as well — I could have gone into something like that. But I'll be honest with you, I love the school environment. I love working with kids. Plus, it's given me an opportunity to spend a lot of time with my husband and four children because they were in the school district (my husband is a teacher).

It's something that I think I was meant to do, but how I got here was just a long, long process.

When people outside of school ask you what you do — say, at a social event — how do you describe your work?

So in my profession, especially for people my age and older, the term used to be “guidance counselor.” We prefer to be called school counselors now, because previously a “counselor” would be considered somebody who supported you in finalizing your credits, who you might've only seen in high school and helped you maybe decide on which direction you were going to go after high school.

Now, many school counselors do tier one counseling, which is working with all students; tier two counseling, which might look like small group support; and then we might do tier three, which is individual counseling for short periods of time. I don't recall that ever being the case when I was a kid. I think I saw my guidance counselor once or twice, maybe, my senior year. Now we're in elementary schools, we're in middle schools, we're in high schools. So it's just a more well-rounded job.

Most of the time, I get a pretty good reaction to telling someone I’m a school counselor. They're like, ‘Cool, that's awesome. You're an educator.’ But if somebody allowed me to get that deep into it, that’s what I’d say.

What does a hard day look like in your role?

Hard days can be super emotional. I think most counselors are pretty good at compartmentalizing the bigger issues so we don't take it home at night, but we get to deal with some of the hardest things that a kid, or even a staff member, will see.

I've had kids come in the day after one of their parents died. I’ve had to talk to kids about some pretty horrific things that have happened in their homes. On top of that, days when we have to implement suicide protocols (after students have expressed thoughts of self-harm) are probably the most emotionally draining. We take that very seriously.

I mean, some days are kind of crazy just because you have a lot of busyness. I never know what my day is going to look like. I could come in one morning and have a plan to do three lessons and talk to five kids, and then find that a student is having some suicidal ideation first thing in the morning and have to support them through managing that, getting in touch with their family and managing the aftermath of that with their teachers.

Bigger events can be really difficult as well. We had a huge, traumatic event in our district with the Route 91 shooting in Las Vegas on Oct. 1, 2017. That affected a lot of families in our community. Over 500 people were shot and 59 died.

Those are big days where you're like, ‘OK, scrap it.’ You shift gears, you’ve got to manage everything. You’ve got to take a step back [and ask yourself], ‘How are we going to support our students as a school? How are we going to support our staff?’

What does a really good day look like?

Field Day is always a really great day. We've had some professional athletes come — from the Golden Knights and the Raiders. They have these events where, like, 50 kids get to practice with the Raiders out in our field. We have picnics where parents come into our school, and we all go out in the field and eat with the students.

Anytime that it can feel like we’re a community, anytime we can do something big with the kids, and you just see them smiling and enjoying themselves, I would say those are my best days. There's nothing like seeing a kid light up, to see a kid giggle. It's soul building to see them have fun.

What is an unexpected way that your role shapes the day for kids?

School counselors are out and about all the time at our school. The day starts, and we're in the hallways with the kids. I think knowing that there are other people in the school besides their teacher that care enough to know their name, know about their families, ask about how their soccer game went last night, know that they have a big test coming up — I think, for some kids, that’s unexpected. For some parents, that’s unexpected. And I think that makes them feel important and seen and heard.

What do you wish you could change about your school or the education system today?

I wish that more people were willing to ask questions about what we do — like you are doing — and listen to our answers.

There are a lot of assumptions about the education field currently — not just about teachers, but about my role too.

I guess if I could change something, it would be that people would listen better, because I think so many of the people [making decisions about] public schools haven’t spent any time in them, and aren’t asking good questions about what we need to support our students.

Your role gives you unique access and insight into today's youth. What is one thing you've learned about young people through your work?

They just give me hope, as an adult. I think that we get super clouded in the day-to-day stuff — paying your bills and being an adult, it can be a lot. I'm not even going to get into politics and all the really scary things that can happen. But kids give me joy and hope.

I know that's not insight, necessarily, but they remind me of all the good things in life. Even though I get to hear some of the worst things that have happened to them, they remind me of all the good things in this world. So I guess maybe my insight is that us adults need to be a little more present in our day and learn to be a little bit more like kids.

© Bibidash / Shutterstock

There are plenty of changes teachers say could help them do their jobs better, such as adequate planning time and support for their well-being.

Louisiana’s Department of Education decided to tackle some of these challenges by bringing together a group of teachers to recommend solutions — and they’re seeing change take shape.

The Let Teachers Teach workgroup released its list of recommendations in May, and their ideas span improvements for dealing with issues including professional development, student discipline and what one of the state’s top education leaders calls “the art of teaching.”

“To me, teaching is a pedagogical science, but it requires an artistic delivery,” Louisiana State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley says. “Unfortunately, many teachers — due to bureaucracies or inadequacies of leadership — feel as if they're more of a robot than a professional.”

The 18 recommendations don’t mince words when describing the problems teachers face. Its section on training eschews “redundant professional learning sessions” in favor of strategies like individually tailored teacher growth plans and more time for better collaboration and planning.

One of the recommendations on discipline is titled “Trust us — don’t blame us,” calling for “excessively disruptive” students to be removed from the classroom and for “ungovernable students” to be assigned to attend alternative schools. This kind of “exclusionary discipline” practice has its critics, who argue it can be counterproductive and that it unfairly targets students who are racial minorities. However, post-pandemic, some teachers are looking for new solutions as they’ve struggled to manage what they call worsened student behaviors.

Brumley says that four recommendations became laws during the state’s spring legislative session. They include a law requiring disruptive students to be removed from class at a teacher’s request and prohibiting retaliation against the teacher.

Others will ban cellphone use in schools starting in the fall and require extra pay for teachers’ “non-academic” work, which Brumley says might include activities like working the concession stand at a school football game.

The legislature also tasked the Louisiana Department of Education and State Board of Education with devising a more effective plan for state-mandated training, Brumley explains. The Let Teachers Teach recommendations described these trainings as something teachers do “outside of the normal school day and without compensation.”

Brumley says he wanted the working group to come up with “real-world solutions to make the profession stronger while keeping in mind that student outcomes have to be paramount.” The concept was to address problems that teachers consistently told him hindered their ability to do their job.

“A very clear example is I will hear teachers say, ‘My school forces me to read a script,’” Brumley says. “We were very clear around that particular concept in the recommendations: Unless it is explicit, direct instructions or it's a novice teacher or a struggling teacher, effective teachers need the autonomy to deliver the content through the art of the profession and not simply reading from a script.”

While Brumley and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry have come out in strong support of the recommendations — they led a news conference announcing the document’s release — that’s not to say the education landscape there is without conflict.

Low earning potential has some Louisiana teachers wondering how much longer they can stay in the field, and the governor declined to back permanent pay raises. It’s also a place where culture wars are playing out, which teachers say are a mental strain — the governor is suing the federal government over expanded Title IX guidelines that protect transgender students from discrimination.

© eamesBot / Shutterstock

When ChatGPT and other new generative AI tools emerged in late 2022, the major concern for educators was cheating. After all, students quickly spread the word on TikTok and other social media platforms that with a few simple prompts, a chatbot could write an essay or answer a homework assignment in ways that would be hard for teachers to detect.

But these days, when it comes to AI, another concern has come into the spotlight: That the technology could lead to less human interaction in schools and colleges — and that school administrators could one day try to use it to replace teachers.

And it's not just educators who are worried, this is becoming an education policy issue.

Just last week, for instance, a bill sailed through both houses of the California state legislature that aims to make sure that courses at the state’s community colleges are taught by qualified humans, not AI bots.

Sabrina Cervantes, a Democratic member of the California State Assembly, who introduced the legislation, said in a statement that the goal of the bill is to “provide guardrails on the integration of AI in classrooms while ensuring that community college students are taught by human faculty.”

To be clear, no one appears to have actually proposed replacing professors at the state’s community colleges with ChatGPT or other generative AI tools. And even the bill’s leaders say they can imagine positive uses for AI in teaching, and the bill wouldn’t stop colleges from using generative AI to help with tasks like grading or creating educational materials.

But champions of the bill also say they have reason to worry about the possibility of AI replacing professors in the future. Earlier this year, for example, a dean at Boston University sparked concern among graduate workers who were on strike seeking higher wages when he listed AI as one possible strategy for handling course discussions and other classroom activities that were impacted by the strike. Officials at the university later clarified that they had no intention of replacing any graduate workers with AI software, though.

“Our intent was not to put a giant brick wall in front of AI,” Brill-Wynkoop says. “That’s nuts. It’s a fast-moving train. We’re not against tech, but the question is ‘How do we use it thoughtfully?’”

— Wendy Brill-Wynkoop, president of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges

While California is the furthest along, it’s not the only state where such measures are being considered. In Minnesota, Rep. Dan Wolgamott, of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, proposed a bill that would forbid campuses in the Minnestate State College and University System from using AI “as the primary instructor for a credit-bearing course.” The measure has stalled for now.

Teachers in K-12 schools are also beginning to push for similar protections against AI replacing educators. The National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union, recently put out a policy statement on the use of AI in education that stressed that human educators should “remain at the center of education.”

It’s a sign of the mixed but highly charged mood among many educators — who see both promise and potential threat in generative AI tech.

Careful Language

Even the education leaders pushing for measures to keep AI from displacing educators have gone out of their way to note that the technology could have beneficial applications in education. They're being cautious about the language they use to ensure they're not prohibiting the use of AI altogether.

The bill in California, for instance, faced initial pushback even from some supporters of the concept, out of worry about moving too soon to legislate the fast-changing technology of generative AI, says Wendy Brill-Wynkoop, president of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, whose group led the effort to draft the bill.

An early version of the bill explicitly stated that AI “may not be used to replace faculty for purposes of providing instruction to, and regular interaction with students in a course of instruction, and may only be used as a peripheral tool.”

Internal debate almost led leaders to spike the effort, she says. Then Brill-Wynkoop suggested a compromise: remove all explicit references to artificial intelligence from the bill’s language.

“We don’t even need the words AI in the bill, we just need to make sure humans are at the center,” she says. So the final language of the very brief proposed legislation reads: “This bill would explicitly require the instructor of record for a course of instruction to be a person who meets the above-described minimum qualifications to serve as a faculty member teaching credit instruction.”

“Our intent was not to put a giant brick wall in front of AI,” Brill-Wynkoop says. “That’s nuts. It’s a fast-moving train. We’re not against tech, but the question is ‘How do we use it thoughtfully?’”

And she admits that she doesn’t think there’s some “evil mastermind in Sacramento saying, ‘I want to get rid of these nasty faculty members.’” But, she adds, in California “education has been grossly underfunded for years, and with limited budgets, there are several tech companies right there that say, ‘How can we help you with your limited budgets by spurring efficiency.’”

Ethan Mollick, a University of Pennsylvania professor who has become a prominent voice on AI in education, wrote in his newsletter last month that he worries that many businesses and organizations are too focused on efficiency and downsizing as they rush to adopt AI technologies. Instead, he argues that leaders should be focused on finding ways to rethink how they do things to take advantage of tasks AI can do well.

He noted in his newsletter that even the companies building these new large language models haven’t yet figured out what real-world tasks they are best suited to do.

“I worry that the lesson of the Industrial Revolution is being lost in AI implementations at companies,” he wrote. “Any efficiency gains must be turned into cost savings, even before anyone in the organization figures out what AI is good for. It is as if, after getting access to the steam engine in the 1700s, every manufacturer decided to keep production and quality the same, and just fire staff in response to new-found efficiency, rather than building world-spanning companies by expanding their outputs.”

The professor wrote that his university’s new Generative AI Lab is trying to model the approach he’d like to see, where researchers work to explore evidence-based uses of AI and work to avoid what he called “downside risks,” meaning the concern that organizations might make ineffective use of AI while pushing out expert employees in the name of cutting costs. And he says the lab is committed to sharing what it learns.

Keeping Humans at the Center

AI Education Project, a nonprofit focused on AI literacy, surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. educators in 2023 about how educators feel about how AI is influencing the world, and education more specifically. In the survey, participants were asked to pick among a list of top concerns about AI and the one that bubbled to the top was that AI could lead to “a lack of human interaction.”

That could be in response to recent announcements by major AI developers — including ChatGPT creator OpenAI — about new versions of their tools that can respond to voice commands and see and respond to what students are inputting on their screens. Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, recently posted a video demo of him using a prototype of his organization’s chatbot Khanmigo, which has these features, to tutor his teenage son. The technology shown in the demo is not yet available, and is at least six months to a year away, according to Khan. Even so, the video went viral and sparked debate about whether any machine can fill in for a human in something as deeply personal as one-on-one tutoring.

In the meantime, many new features and products released in recent weeks focus on helping educators with administrative tasks or responsibilities like creating lesson plans and other classroom materials. And those are the kinds of behind-the-scenes uses of AI that students may never even know are happening.

That was clear in the exhibit hall of last week’s ISTE Live conference in Denver, which drew more than 15,000 educators and edtech leaders. (EdSurge is an independent newsroom that shares a parent organization with ISTE. Learn more about EdSurge ethics and policies here and supporters here.)

Tiny startups, tech giants and everything in between touted new features that use generative AI to support educators with a range of responsibilities, and some companies had tools to serve as a virtual classroom assistant.

Many teachers at the event weren’t actively worried about being replaced by bots.

“It’s not even on my radar, because what I bring to the classroom is something that AI cannot replicate,” said Lauren Reynolds, a third grade teacher at Riverwood Elementary School in Oklahoma City. “I have that human connection. I’m getting to know my kids on an individual basis. I’m reading more than just what they’re telling me.”

Christina Matasavage, a STEM teacher at Belton Preparatory Academy in South Carolina, said she thinks the COVID shutdowns and emergency pivots to distance learning proved that gadgets can’t step in and replace human instructors. “I think we figured out that teachers are very much needed when COVID happened and we went virtual. People figured out very [quickly] that we cannot be replaced” with tech.

© Bas Nastassia / Shutterstock

Soon after Miriam Bravo began watching her 2-year-old grandson full-time, she realized that many years had passed since she was last responsible for a young child. Feeling a bit rusty, she turned to the internet to seek out activities suitable for little Tadeo and advice for how best to support him.

She found some resources online, such as songs to sing with him, but Bravo wanted more.

Bravo is part of a group of caregivers often referred to as family, friend and neighbor (FFN) providers. Although this is the most common non-parental child care arrangement in the United States, used by millions of families, few options for training and education are available to FFN providers. Most early care and education supports are reserved for licensed child care providers or parents. And the limited professional development opportunities available to FFNs are often inaccessible, due to factors such as costs, scheduling and language barriers.

So it was lucky that when Bravo knocked on the door of a community center near her home in San Jose, California, wondering whether they had any programs to help her improve as a caregiver, she found exactly what she was looking for.

In Bravo’s northern California community, a home visiting service called ParentChild+ has adapted its well-established model for parents to fit the needs and priorities of home-based child care providers, including FFNs.

For decades, evidence-based home visits from trained professionals have supported families across the U.S. These programs empower parents to engage their children with high-quality, developmentally appropriate activities; promote social-emotional skills and school readiness among kids; and foster a safe, healthy, nurturing home environment. More recently, a number of national home visiting programs have recognized an opportunity to reach more children by serving home-based child care providers, too, and there’s evidence to show it’s making a difference.

“This is promising,” says Natalie Renew, executive director of Home Grown, a national initiative to increase access to and quality of home-based child care, “especially in a landscape where there are so few other interventions.”

People want to do right by kids and many times don’t have the tools or knowledge of what the right thing is. Sometimes it’s just bringing in new opportunities.

— Kerry Caverly

In the last few years, Home Grown has provided grants to three home visiting programs that serve home-based providers — ParentChild+, Parents as Teachers and Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters — to help them better understand the needs of the caregivers they’re engaging, learn what factors contribute to the success of the programs and, ultimately, expand their footprint.

It’s an investment in an often-overlooked but invaluable caregiver population that, in most cases, was already looking for ways to provide higher quality care and education to children, explains Kerry Caverly, chief program office at Parents as Teachers.

“People want to do right by kids and many times don’t have the tools or knowledge of what the right thing is,” Caverly says. “Sometimes it’s just bringing in new opportunities.”

An Organic Expansion

Bravo signed on to the free, voluntary, home-based child care model with ParentChild+ right away. Since February, Stephanie, the home visitor assigned to Bravo, has been visiting her and Tadeo twice a week.

Stephanie brings books, toys and materials that Bravo keeps and can use during future learning activities with Tadeo. But her home visitor’s biggest contributions, Bravo shares in Spanish through an interpreter, are less tangible.

Tadeo lights up when Stephanie arrives, Bravo says. He’s eager to find out which activity she planned for him that day. His motor skills have improved, and now, at 2-and-a-half years old, he’s cutting with scissors — a task that many children have not yet mastered by kindergarten. He is able to focus and complete activities that his attention span did not allow even a few months ago.

Bravo, for her part, has gained confidence. She has become a more patient, loving caregiver, she says. “It’s brought us closer.” She sees herself now as more than Tadeo’s grandmother; she is his teacher as well.

Miriam Bravo with her 2-year-old grandson Tadeo. Through home visits from ParentChild+, Bravo says she has become a better caregiver to Tadeo. Photo courtesy of Bravo.

The ParentChild+ home-based child care model emerged organically, says Sarah Walzer, CEO of the organization, which started in 1965 as a home visiting program for parents and today serves a majority immigrant population that speaks over 40 languages.

A little over a decade ago, home visitors reported that a number of parents in their caseload were caring for other children in the community. Over the next few years, in response to that need, ParentChild+ built out a parallel model tailored to home-based child care providers, including FFNs. Today, the program has a presence in 10 states.

The program for home-based providers runs for 24 weeks, compared to 46 weeks for families. The visits are designed around hands-on learning activities and play, Walzer says, adding that the goal is to improve the quality of the child care and to build school readiness for children, with attention to the learning environment and adult-child interactions.

We don’t go in there to find what is missing, lacking or illegal. We go in to look at what is going really well and strengthen [it].

— Sarah Walzer

Their work is strengths-based, Walzer explains. Home visitors seek to identify what’s already working and build on it — that’s true of other home visiting models and of home visits targeted to parents.

“We don’t go in there to find what is missing, lacking or illegal,” Walzer says. “We go in to look at what is going really well and strengthen areas of child care” based on evidence-based practices.

Parents as Teachers has a similar origin story for its home-based child care model, which they call “Supporting Care Providers Through Person Visits” (SCPV).

It was the late 1990s, and more women were entering the workforce, recalls Caverly, the chief program officer. More families, as a result, were seeking out child care arrangements. Home visitors serving families across the country were sharing that they’d show up for home visits and find a relative or neighbor with the child instead of the parent.

“It really got us thinking,” Caverly remembers.

Parents as Teachers adapted its curricula and built out the SCPV program, which is currently being used in 12 states. (With funding from Home Grown, they are updating their curricula for home-based providers and will spend much of 2025 using those new resources to expand their reach.)

Both Parents as Teachers and ParentChild+ serve a mix of licensed home-based child care providers and unlicensed FFNs through their home visiting programs, but “at the heart of it is FFNs,” says Caverly, adding that their work with FFNs does look, in a lot of ways, like their work with families.

One of the key distinctions between their work with providers and families, she says, is that providers learn how to do screenings and evaluations of the children in their care.

That element was especially valuable for Gretchen Dunn, a licensed provider in Olathe, Kansas.

Dunn has owned her home-based child care program for 25 years, she says, but when she heard Parents as Teachers was offering home visits for providers, she called up her local site and asked to participate.

She’s a seasoned provider who attends annual training, she acknowledges, but she liked the idea of getting a “refresher” and the chance to observe another early childhood professional interact with the kids in her care.

Gretchen Dunn with four children in her program on Valentine's Day 2024. Dunn learned how to screen for developmental delays during home visits from Parents as Teachers. Photo courtesy of Dunn.

Over the course of two years, Dunn received monthly home visits, during which her home visitor would usually lead an activity with the kids and leave Dunn with a handout so she could repeat it in the future. The home visitor also brought books. And she helped Dunn screen children for possible developmental delays using the Ages and Stages Questionnaire, something Dunn hadn’t used before in her program. Those evaluations can tell a provider if a child may need to see a specialist — a speech therapist, for example — but they can also help inform providers about appropriate activities and interactions to use with each child.

The entire experience was validating for Dunn, she says. As the sole employee of her program, she has minimal adult interaction during the day. Plus, there is rarely anyone to observe her work or note if she is doing a good job.

“To have someone who actually knows my field and training come in and give me new ideas and support and back me up — all those things, that’s what I enjoyed” the most, she says.

‘Money Well Spent’

Perhaps the biggest hangup of this model is money, according to Renew of Home Grown.

The sites that already exist to provide home visiting services — to both families and providers — say that with more funding, they could reach many more caregivers.

“We know we have a lot of children who will fall through the cracks,” says Maria Rios, a home visitor for Parents as Teachers in Kansas City, Kansas, who has a caseload of 30 home-based child care providers. “I wish there was more funding.”

Rios, a former preschool teacher and school vice principal, is less concerned about children’s academic skills. “They’ll learn their ABCs in school,” she says. It’s the social-emotional skills — how to interact with other children, how to share — that she feels many children need to pick up sooner.

Home visiting programs are expensive to implement, as most high intensity, high integrity services tend to be, says Renew. It’s a big shift, she adds, for states and localities to go from spending zero dollars on FFN providers to investing thousands of dollars in each person. But she thinks it’s feasible, especially given the number of children who stand to benefit.

A few different funding models are in play already. The state of Colorado has used its Preschool Development Grant Birth to Five dollars on home visiting. And ParentChild+ is getting public funding, including dollars from the federal pandemic-era American Rescue Plan Act, to support its home-based child care programming at several sites, including New York state and counties in North Carolina.

“From our perspective,” says Renew, “it’s money well spent.”

It certainly has been for Bravo, the FFN provider in California. Both the mentorship from her home visitor and the new community she has found among other FFNs in her area have made for a “beautiful experience.”

“It’s not just a program,” Bravo adds, “it’s a family.”

Equipped with new caregiving expertise, she’s thought about taking in more children. She is open to the idea, she says. At a minimum, she’ll get to use her knowledge with future grandchildren.

© MIA Studio / Shutterstock

About two years ago, I had a health crisis that not only jeopardized my well-being, but also threatened the continuity of care for the families I serve as the owner of a home-based child care program.

One day when I was cleaning up at the end of a work day, I began experiencing heart palpitations and difficulty breathing. After a number of medical visits, I was hospitalized and eventually diagnosed with atrial fibrillation (AFIB) — a condition which can lead to blood clots and a risk of stroke or a heart attack. My doctors put me on heart medicine as a first step, but things worsened. Since then, I’ve had a number of procedures including a surgery on my heart.

Left with no choice, I took a leave of absence to get treatment and recuperate. To keep the program running, I relied on my adult daughters, who chose to move back in with me and work alongside the part time teacher I employ.

As a longtime early childhood educator who has been nurturing young minds for four decades, I’m aware of the many challenges of the profession, from compensation to staffing to a lack of respect for the work. But this experience left me wondering — where is my safety net when I fall ill or seek retirement as an early childhood educator?

Desperate to keep my program open, even though I couldn’t work myself, I sought financial assistance. I received state disability benefits back in 2022, when my health crisis began, but it wasn’t renewed the subsequent year. The lack of support has left me feeling frustrated and embarrassed, especially considering my long-standing service to the community.

Sadly, my experience is not uncommon. According to a survey administered to more than 350 early childhood educators by the National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC) — a nonprofit that supports home-based early learning programs like mine — only 16 percent of respondents reported that their income allowed them to afford essential benefits like retirement and health insurance.

While some states are taking steps to address various elements of the child care crisis, the reality remains: We are undervalued and overlooked. With the average child care worker earning just $32,070 annually, fair compensation, benefits and federal support are imperative. It's time to recognize the vital role we play and provide us with the support we deserve.

The absence of adequate support for the early childhood workforce resonates throughout the entire child care system, impacting early educators, children and families. When experienced professionals like myself are forced to step away due to health concerns or lack of financial stability, it disrupts the consistency and quality of care for the children we serve. Families are left scrambling to find alternative arrangements, and the relationships we’ve built with them are jeopardized.

Moreover, the challenges faced by early educators extend beyond financial strains. For me, the emotional toll of navigating a health crisis without a safety net was overwhelming. I entered this profession out of a genuine passion for supporting our littlest learners, but the constant stress and uncertainty of knowing whether I’d be able to keep the doors open took a toll on my well-being. I deserve better. We all do.

Addressing these systemic issues requires a multifaceted approach. First, there must be increased investment in the child care sector to ensure that early educators are compensated fairly for the invaluable work we do. This includes not only raising wages, but also providing comprehensive benefits such as health insurance and retirement plans. Additionally, there needs to be greater awareness and advocacy surrounding the unique challenges faced by those of us in the profession, with a focus on implementing policies that prioritize the well-being of child care providers and the children in their care.

As for me, I’m still recovering and have a number of physical limitations, but thankfully, I’ve been able to keep my program running and have taken a more active role in advocating for early childhood educators. I have sat on advisory boards to communicate the needs of family child care providers, shared my voice as a panelist on these issues and reached out to my mayor and local council to get involved. I am learning more about child care policies and how I, as a family child care educator, can make change.

I’ve spent my entire career supporting children and their families, first as an early educator and then as the owner of my own early learning program. Next year will mark 20 years since I started working for myself, and it was one of the best decisions I have made. It hasn’t been easy; however, I am extremely proud of the program I have created. It is one where children are safe and loved, and where parents have peace of mind while they’re away from their babies. I will continue to raise my voice and advocate for all early educators. It's time for us to be recognized, supported and valued as essential contributors to society.

© Illustration Forest / Shutterstock

With interest in the teaching profession waning and enrollment in teacher preparation programs reaching historic lows, all eyes are on the next crop of students — tomorrow’s prospective educators — to make up the deficit.

Today’s high school and college students are part of Generation Z, a group of people who range in age from 12 to 28, and have characteristics, attitudes and aspirations that distinguish them from prior generations.

In partnership with researchers at Vanderbilt University, the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), a nonprofit that works to improve public education across 16 states in the Southeast, has been examining the next generation’s interest in the teaching profession and has published their findings in a report released in April.

Using extensive student survey data from ACT, a nonprofit assessment organization, along with state-level educator data and interviews with Gen Z teacher candidates and newly hired teachers, the researchers gained insight into Gen Z’s perceptions and motivations around teaching and identified opportunities to attract more of them into the field.

Though the study concentrates on two “data-rich” states, Kentucky and Tennessee, researchers say their findings are consistent with what one might expect to see nationally.

“A lot of trends in Kentucky and Tennessee mirror the trends in the South and across the nation,” says Megan Boren, project manager at SREB and a co-author of the report — with the caveat that teacher shortages are generally more severe in the South than in other parts of the U.S.

Gen Z is more college-going and tech-savvy than its predecessors. It is more racially and ethnically diverse. And according to a literature review conducted by the researchers, Americans who are part of Gen Z say they want jobs that provide financial security and ongoing support, along with flexibility, autonomy, collaboration and a sense of purpose.

Some of those characteristics are consistent with careers in education. Teaching, many would argue, is one of the most meaningful jobs available. It is not, however, known for its flexibility or pay.

As a result, members of Gen Z are less interested in becoming teachers than earlier generations. Enrollment in preparation programs began to dip around 2010, but it hit new lows once the first members of Gen Z (colloquially referred to as Zoomers) entered higher education in 2014, researchers found.

The decline has become worse in the decade since, says Thomas Smith, professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt and an author of the report.

Drawing on ACT data from the eight Southern states that require or pay for high schoolers to take the test, Smith and his colleagues found that, between 2013 and 2022, interest steadily dwindled. Because it was already minimal to begin with, the researchers say, this is a worrying trend.

“In our country, the best avenue that students have to excel, to achieve and to be part of this workforce is through education,” says Stephen Pruitt, president of SREB. “So if we don’t have the people who are able to teach our students, it’s going to be a severe cap on what people are able to do.”

There are ways to turn that trend around, Boren and Smith believe.

In the study, they found that participation in introductory high school teaching courses in Kentucky and Tennessee was increasing. It’s possible, they say, that the emergence of those classes has prevented even steeper declines among those entering the field, and that cultivating an early interest in education is key to building a strong pipeline. (It’s also possible, Smith adds, that such courses are popular because they are seen as “easier.”)

Data from the annual Tennessee Educator Survey found that more than half of early-career teachers entered college “already sure or pretty sure” that they wanted to go into education.

“That leads us to keep thinking about what can be done early on to get people hooked on teaching as a profession,” says Smith.

Gen Z is looking for flexibility. Teaching has not traditionally been a flexible job.

— Thomas Smith

Boren agrees that early exposure could be a critical route for getting more people into educator preparation programs and, ultimately, classrooms.

“Teaching is less attractive than maybe it once was,” she acknowledges. “Parents are not encouraging their children to go into teaching. Sometimes teachers aren’t encouraging students to go into teaching. If we were able to turn that narrative around and introduce the wonderfulness of teaching to students early on, give them a taste of it — perhaps that can be one of the many ways we can get more folks into the classroom.”

Still, that tactic doesn’t solve the many downsides to teaching that Gen Z sees: rigid scheduling, isolation in classrooms, low compensation, lack of autonomy, and a lack of respect, appreciation and professionalization from the public.

“Gen Z is looking for flexibility,” Smith says. “Teaching has not traditionally been a flexible job.”

It’s a difficult reality, especially when many other jobs have only become more flexible since the pandemic; hybrid and remote working arrangements have stuck around in other sectors.

It’s not just about remote work, though, Boren says. “The way things have always been done is not attractive to Gen Z.” They want work-life balance. They want to incorporate “innovative technology use,” she says.

Boren says there are “hundreds” of examples of schools creatively building flexibility into the workday and work week for teachers.

One strategy is hiring additional support staff, allowing teachers to have guaranteed planning time or freeing them up to walk down the hall and observe a colleague teach a lesson. That lends itself to both flexibility and support, she notes. Boren shared about a district that opens one hour late on Wednesdays so staff can run errands or otherwise get that time back for themselves. She also mentioned a school in Oklahoma that worked with the community to set a schedule that allows teachers to have every Friday off work in April and May, when the weather is nice and morale may be slipping toward the end of the school year.

“A little bit of give and take is really what folks are asking for,” she says.

Those examples, so far, are sparing. Pruitt, the SREB president and a former teacher, concedes that in most places, trying to make any changes to the structure of the school day or week is going to be met with resistance.

“We’re in the same model we’ve been using since the 1800s,” he says, underscoring the challenge.

Members of Gen Z also want to be a part of work that is collaborative, which exists in pockets of the profession but is “not a strong tradition in teaching,” Smith says. “There’s much more of a tradition of being on your own in your class with your door closed.”

The relationship with students — along with the impact on young people and, by extension, society — is attractive to members of Gen Z, Boren and Smith say. It also aligns with what EdSurge has found in interviews with early-career teachers and teacher candidates who are part of Gen Z.

Yet a sense of purpose alone clearly isn’t sufficient to compel enough young people into the field.

Some members of Gen Z may have seen firsthand, as students, that their teachers were not given the support, tools or appreciation they needed to be successful, Smith notes. Others may have internalized negative narratives and perceptions of teaching that others share.

“Those messages are being picked up by lots of folks, and certainly Gen Z included,” says Smith. “It’s not doing us any favors to get more teachers.”

© insta_photos / Shutterstock

In the two decades that Jennifer Merriman has been in education, she’s seen a tendency in the field to solve problems by piling more tasks onto teachers who are already straining under the weight of their workloads.

That ultimately works against what researchers say is one of the most important pillars of a school’s success: the well-being of its teachers. Findings from the University of Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre are detailed in a new report commissioned by the International Baccalaureate Organization, where Merriman is the global director of research, policy and design.

“If workload is already the burden on teachers, I think schools will have to get creative,” Merriman says, “and hopefully the teachers themselves can help with the innovation of how to focus on well-being without it becoming yet another burdensome activity that they've got to check the box on.”

Researchers say that schools have a vested interest in improving teacher well-being, citing a 2022 Gallup poll that found 44 percent of K-12 workers in the United States “always” or “very often” feel burned out at work. Zooming in on only teachers, they had the highest rate of burnout among all school workers at 52 percent.

A Sparse Research Field

The International Baccalaureate decided to take a closer look at teacher well-being following the toll taken on schools by the COVID-19 pandemic, Merriman says, when it became apparent that little research existed on the topic. The paper is the second in a series of three that the organization commissioned, with the first covering student well-being.

“The pandemic hit, and everybody was suffering: students and their families and guardians and teachers and school administrators,” she says. “[The Wellbeing Research Centre] really are helping us to understand the science behind well-being. How do we define it? What are the drivers or determinants of well-being? And then what might we do at the IB or globally to really try and improve student and teacher well-being?”

Researchers developed what the report calls a framework that divides teacher well-being into three main factors: job satisfaction, individual elements like physical health, and school-level drivers like work-life balance and class size.

While the report cautions that the research field is in its infancy and the teacher well-being drivers it identifies may not be exhaustive, it offers the framework to start conversations at schools that want to better support teachers.

Researchers also identified school climate, salary satisfaction, supportive professional relationships, job security, continuous learning, and workplace recognition as school-level factors that drive teachers’ job satisfaction.

Researchers from the University of Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre developed a framework that divides teacher well-being into three main factors: job satisfaction, individual elements like physical health, and school-level drivers like work-life balance and class size.

Well-being and Student Success

The ultimate goal is for schools to “have these conversations about what's really important to the teachers and to the staff, and for the school to understand the local context and what's driving strong or weaker levels of school satisfaction for those educators,” Merriman says.

Some poll data shows that more than half of teachers have considered quitting, and Merriman says it's important for the education field at large to improve workplace well-being before the declining number of teachers becomes a potential crisis. It may already feel that way in some parts of the country where teacher turnover rates hit as high as 24 percent in 2022.

“I think one thing that we all sort of felt intuitively but came through very clearly in the reports is the through line between teachers and students,” she says. “The most important factor, the thing that contributes the most to students' academic and well-being outcomes, are teachers within a school. There's nothing else in a school that contributes more to their outcomes, both non-academic and academic.”

© Alphavector / Shutterstock

Viridiana Martinez’s family immigrated twice when she was in elementary school — once, from Mexico to Canada, and a second time to the United States. With each move, she had to learn a new language and adjust to a different culture.

During those transitions, Martinez was both challenged and uplifted, often by kind teachers and mentors whom she met at school.

Now a college graduate, the 21-year-old is channeling her lived experiences into a career path.

This fall, Martinez will become a bilingual teacher for students in kindergarten through eighth grade in Morgan Hill, a small city near San Jose, California, as part of the next Teach for America cohort. Her teacher training begins in June.

Martinez knows that there is a dearth of bilingual teachers in the United States, and she wants to help fill the gap. But more than that, she wants to encourage bilingual students and English language learners the way other teachers did for her. Along the way, she says, she wants to help students identify their strengths and find their voices.

At a time when the teaching profession is in decline, with fewer young people entering the field, EdSurge is following individuals pursuing careers in the classroom anyway. What motivates them? What worries them? And why are they undeterred?

In our Future Teachers series, we ask these questions to aspiring educators on the cusp of entering the classroom. In this installment, we’re featuring Martinez.

The following interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

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Name: Viridiana Martinez

Age: 21

Current town: Berkeley, California

College: University of California, Berkeley

Intends to teach: Bilingual education in a K-8 school

Hometown: Monterrey, Mexico

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EdSurge: What is your earliest memory of a teacher?

Viridiana Martinez: The earliest memory I have of a teacher is my first grade teacher in Mexico. She was stern, but also very loving. She always had very high expectations of her students, and that is something that I really appreciated about her. She believed her students could achieve great things.

Viridiana Martinez with her first grade teacher in Monterrey, Mexico. (Photo courtesy of Martinez)

When did you realize that you might want to become a teacher?

I worked in an elementary school as part of my education minor at the University of California, Berkeley, during my junior year, and I think that had a great impact on me. I would have one-on-one sessions with students so they could practice and enhance their reading skills and fluency. I really enjoyed working with my students, and seeing them improve made me feel super proud of them. I’ve wanted to go into the teaching profession ever since then.

That would’ve been in college for you. What had you been thinking you might want to do before that?

Before, I wanted to study psychology … but I didn't know exactly what path I wanted to take. Then, as I added my education and child development minors, [my classes] sparked my interest in going into teaching. I didn't have a specific plan or career picked out previously. I was just kind of going with the flow, really.

I knew that I wanted to work with children. I just didn't know what profession yet. Teaching did cross my mind. Then, as I went through this experience and started working with students, it solidified for me that I definitely wanted to become a teacher.

Did you ever reconsider?

I don't think so. I went through a lot of ideas of what careers I could go into, but nothing really felt as fulfilling as teaching, so I stuck with it.

Did your own experiences in school have any influence on your decision to pursue this career?

Yeah. I attended schools in California that have predominantly Latino populations, and I did have a few Latino teachers that were able to help me learn English. I think that sense of community and support from my own teachers and counselors helped me decide that this was something that I wanted to do.

I understand that you had to learn a couple different languages as part of your schooling. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

I was born in Mexico and lived there until I was 7 years old. Then I moved to a French-speaking region in Canada with my family, so I had to learn French in addition to everything else that comes from moving countries. There was a shift in culture and in school.

Then, about three years later, my family and I moved again, to California, so I had to learn English and readjust all over again. I have been in California ever since.

Viridiana Martinez sees snow for the first time after moving with her family from Mexico to Canada. (Photo courtesy of Martinez)

Were there any teachers, coaches or counselors who helped you through those transitions that stand out to you?

Absolutely. I came to California when I was in fifth grade, and I had two teachers that were amazing. They always made me feel included in the classroom. They made sure that I had access to learning the language — for example, they labeled the items in the classroom for me in Spanish and English. And they explained my situation to the other students in the class so that they could understand the position I was in.

Were there other English language learners in your classes?

Not in fifth grade, but years later, when I was in middle school and high school, I did meet students who were just learning English as their second language.

Tell me about your decision to apply for Teach for America.

I heard about Teach for America during my last semester at UC Berkeley, and I thought it was a perfect step for me. I attended one of their in-person events and met multiple people who were part of the program and were able to answer my questions. I ended up applying shortly after attending the event. I chose this program because they offered great communication and support, which is exactly what I was looking for.

My goal is to become a full-time classroom teacher.

Why are you interested in teaching bilingual K-8 classes?

I am very passionate about teaching in bilingual classrooms. I [want to help students] overcome language barriers and cultural barriers. My experience moving countries twice and having to learn a new language twice has given me a lot of insight into what students go through and what I can do to help them to succeed in the classroom.

Why do you want to become a teacher?

I think that it is a very fulfilling profession. Everyone wants the next generations to excel in academics and be able to have a bright future. I want to make sure that the next generation has the right support [to succeed].

In college, during my experience [tutoring] at the elementary school, I had a student who inspired me. It wasn't until the end of our session, but we had a little survey for them with questions about how their sessions went, whether they felt like they learned anything, that sort of thing. One of the questions was what they wanted to do when they grow up, and this particular student said that they wanted to be a tutor just like me. That just really solidified it for me.

What gives you hope about becoming a teacher?

Just having an impact on the next generation is what gives me hope. I’m excited to show them what their strengths are, help them see that they can speak on their own and that they can make a difference if they believe in themselves.

What worries you or gives you pause about becoming a teacher?

I have heard that many teachers have noticed a big setback in students' math and reading skills since the pandemic. It was a very difficult time for both teachers and students, which unfortunately resulted in slower learning. My biggest worry is how this will actually play out in the classroom and what I can do to effectively support my students.

Why does the field need you right now?

We need more bilingual teachers. That is really important. There are so many schools that have students that are either currently trying to learn English as their second language or are bilingual. They deserve to have access to bilingual programs with bilingual teachers that can support them to excel academically. And I think that my own experiences will allow me to provide enriching bilingual classes to students.

© URem / Shutterstock

A program that began in Kentucky as a novel idea to rebuild the early childhood workforce — and, in effect, buoy the broader labor market — has quickly spread to states across the country.

To draw early educators back into classrooms, legislators in the Bluegrass State made a change in fall 2022 that expanded the eligibility requirements of Kentucky’s child care subsidy program to include all staff who work at least 20 hours per week in a licensed early care and education program. In effect, early childhood educators became automatically eligible for free child care for their own kids, regardless of household income.

It was an instant boon. In its first year, 3,200 Kentucky parents working in early care and education participated in the program, with some 5,600 children benefitting.

Early childhood advocates, policymakers and business leaders in other states took notice. A creative solution with immediate impacts? They wanted in.

“It blew up,” says Lauren Hogan, managing director of policy and professional advancement at the National Association for the Education of Young Children, a nonprofit membership organization that advocates for high-quality early learning. “There’s a reason it’s gotten steam. It’s proven valuable.”

A year-and-a-half into Kentucky’s experiment, more than a dozen states have either launched their own programs or are seriously considering it, including Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, Nebraska and Rhode Island.

If all 50 states, plus Washington, D.C., adopted a policy like Kentucky’s, more than 234,000 staff in early care and education settings with children under age 6 could benefit, according to an estimate from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment.

The premise of the initiative is simple: Better-staffed early care and education programs will increase the supply of child care, allowing more parents to re-enter the workforce. But the field has struggled to retain and attract staff.

Over the last few years, amid the pandemic and rising inflation, many early educators left the field because they found they could make more money elsewhere. Everyone from Amazon to Target to Chick-fil-A was offering higher wages. Child care providers, already operating on the tiniest of margins and charging families more than they can reasonably afford, simply couldn’t compete.

The result was understaffed early care and education programs, leading to closed classrooms and more families without access to care.

Kentucky’s approach works because it gives early care and education providers a tool to retain the staff they have and sweeten the deal for prospective educators.

“If you can’t directly increase the money in folks’ pockets, you can at least reduce their costs,” explains Hogan. “A lot of them have child care costs.”

Some of our educators can’t even pay for their own children to go to the program where they work, and that just doesn’t make sense.

— Lisa Hildebrand

Beyond how attractive it is for the economy, the program is also snuffing out a bitter irony that has long persisted in the field: Those who provide child care can seldom afford it themselves.

“Some of our educators can’t even pay for their own children to go to the program where they work, and that just doesn’t make sense,” says Lisa Hildebrand, executive director of the Rhode Island Association for the Education of Young Children. “Now, there is a way for them to be able to afford that.”

Rhode Island is eight months into a year-long, $4 million pilot of a program modeled on Kentucky’s — one that Hildebrand hopes will be renewed in the state legislature come June.

There is certainly evidence to support its continuation, she shares.

As of March, 475 children were participating in the pilot program. Their parents work across 162 different center- and home-based early education programs throughout Rhode Island.

Of those participating, 23 percent were already eligible for the state’s existing income-based Child Care Assistance Program. But more than three-fourths have had child care expenses waived through the pilot. (Rhode Island’s program differs from Kentucky’s in that it does have an income cap, just one that is notably higher than that available to other families in the state.)

Providers have shared that they’ve been able to bring back former classroom teachers and attract new ones to their programs, which is a huge relief to the sector, Hildebrand says.

“Staffing right now is at such a critical level [for some providers] that if they lose one teacher it means closing a classroom with a large number of children,” she explains. “We [already] have long wait lists, families waiting years for a slot. That’s less people in the workforce.”

In a survey conducted by the Rhode Island Department of Human Services, which administers the program, one provider called the pilot “life changing” for staff with young children. Others mentioned an influx of job applicants and new hires who are experienced and excited to work in the field — neither of which is a given in the underpaid profession.

Another provider said, “This has been an amazing experience. We were able to attract a top-notch toddler teacher who had chosen to stay home because the cost of child care was too high in comparison to her income.”

“Categorical eligibility” for child care workers is a rare policy solution that “can be embraced by red states and blue states,” notes Hogan.

We cannot solve our workforce crisis without solving our child care crisis.

— Katie Bass

In Nebraska, a bipartisan group of legislators has been pushing for a bill with expanded eligibility for early care and education staff this legislative session.

“We are in a workforce crisis in Nebraska, and we’re in a child care crisis,” says Katie Bass, data and policy research advisor at First Five Nebraska, a bipartisan public policy organization focused on expanding opportunities in the early years. “We cannot solve our workforce crisis without solving our child care crisis.”

The Nebraska bill ultimately did not pass before the end of the session in mid-April — there just wasn’t enough money this time, Bass explains, but says “it’s certainly not stopping here.”

Representatives from conservative and liberal groups alike testified in favor of the program. The bill’s sponsor, State Sen. John Fredrickson, intends to reintroduce the legislation in the next session, which begins in January 2025, Bass says. In the meantime, he has introduced an interim study to evaluate the different approaches other states are taking and determine the version that will best suit early educators in Nebraska.

“It’s kind of unprecedented,” Bass says of the bill’s wide base of supporters. “The lack of child care is affecting every single sector’s ability to operate.”

© Lordn / Shutterstock

Around this time four years ago, a seismic event was rippling across education.

In April 2020, teachers were beginning to realize that their schools’ closures would not be all that temporary. They’d need to make do with haphazard plans for distance learning through the end of the school year — perhaps longer.

For most educators, the pandemic was a defining moment in their careers, a situation more disruptive than they could’ve imagined.

For first-year teachers, it was baptism by fire.

In summer 2020, EdSurge profiled nine first-year teachers to understand what it was like for them to launch their careers during the pandemic year (2019-20).

Now, all of them are (or would be) in their fifth year in the classroom — a year by which about 44 percent of educators have left the profession. We checked in with them this month to see how they’re doing, what they’re up to and where they are now.

Six of the original nine responded to our queries. Of those six, one left teaching during her third year, and another will resign next month, at the end of the school year. The other four are still teaching and plan to continue.

EdSurge asked them to share about the challenges, rewards and lessons from their first five years — and, if they left, to elaborate on what drove them out. Their written responses are below, lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

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Read the original story, from August 2020, here. Or listen to some of the teachers reflect on their first year during an episode of the EdSurge Podcast.

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Lauren Bayersdorfer

Age: 28
Location: East Rutherford, New Jersey
Status: Still teaching
Starting salary: ~$65,000
Current salary: ~$70,000

Can you give a brief overview of what you’ve taught over the past five years?

I spent the first 3.5 years of my career at Weehawken High School, where I taught Algebra I (students in grades seven to nine) and AP Calculus (grades 11-12). For the past 1.5 years, I have been teaching Algebra I and geometry for grades nine and 10 at Becton Regional High School.

What has been the most challenging and rewarding part of your job?

The most challenging part has definitely been trying to keep students engaged in the classroom and interested in their learning. It's hard to teach math, period. But to compete with TikTok, social media and talking to their friends makes it that much more difficult.

The most rewarding part has been to get to know the kids on a more personal level, whether by incorporating occasional community-building activities in the classroom, or through the privilege of being their coach outside of the classroom. In addition, being able to learn from — and form friendships with — colleagues has been rewarding.

What has been the most surprising part of your teaching experience so far?

Just simply how difficult and demanding the job is. I normally walk more than 10,000 steps during school hours and am always exhausted by the end of the school day. Sometimes I just need a few minutes in my car to decompress before I run errands, go home and do more work. You always try to tell yourself, “It's only a job,” and not work outside of contract hours, but teaching is so much more than a job. It's a passion.

How do you think starting your career during the height of COVID-19 shaped your teaching experience and approach?

It showed me how, before any of the items in the job description and responsibilities [related to] teaching them math, that my No. 1 goal is to build relationships with students. You never know what any student is tackling. Coming to your class or seeing you in the hallway might be the highlight of their day!

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Jamie Wong Baesa

Age: 28
Location: Lorena, Texas
Status: Still teaching, but leaving at the end of this school year
Starting salary: ~$40,000
Current salary: ~$48,000

Can you give a brief overview of what you’ve taught over the past five years?

I have been in the same school (and same classroom!) since I first started. However, my roles and responsibilities have shifted. I started out teaching seventh grade math and did that for three years. Being in a small school, they needed help taking on extra elective sections, so I also started teaching eighth grade art in my fourth year. Finally, this year, I’ve added sixth grade math, so now I have a hand in all three grade levels at our middle school.

What has been the most challenging and rewarding part of your job?

The most challenging part of my job has been “all the other stuff” that comes with teaching. I teach math and art, but I also teach kids how to disagree in a healthy way, how to handle stress, how to communicate effectively, how to read and write, how to engage in the world we live in and how to manage social media. No one tells you that when you become a teacher, your role encompasses so much. We are with these students for eight hours every day, and the influence and opportunity we have is incredible, but also really hard, especially coming out of the pandemic. We aren’t trained to be professional counselors, but a lot of times this role (and many others) are thrust upon us because we are available and we care. I think this is also what leads to teacher burnout. We do so much more than our job descriptions and do not necessarily get the compensation or training we need to do it all.

The most rewarding part of my job has always been relationships — with students and with coworkers. Teaching is 100 percent a people profession, and it has been a joy to interact daily with so many wonderful humans, to see each individual grow and change and go through different life stages — good and bad. To have a tight-knit community like this has been very impactful for me.

How do you think starting your career during the height of COVID-19 shaped your teaching experience and approach?

In my five years, I had a hard time figuring out what “normal” was supposed to be in teaching. From a year cut short by COVID-19, to a hybrid year, to a year where we pretended nothing had happened — every year was a rollercoaster and vastly different from the previous one.

On the bright side, my teaching approach became one of adaptability and resilience. I had to constantly ask myself: What really matters? Is it that the student can tell me what lateral surface area is, or is it that a student who has a family member with autoimmune disease feels safe at school every day? It was not always such a dramatic dichotomy, but I think many can relate to this idea of survival. We taught what we could, we emphasized the content and skills that would last, but we also just made sure everyone was safe, healthy and getting what they individually needed. This shifted my perspective and helped me remember that, just as we try to individualize instruction, we also remember that every student (and teacher) is going through something different and needs both grace and accountability.

I think teaching these past five years has made me more empathetic and reminded me that isolated classrooms [existing] in a school bubble aren’t realistic. The students I see daily are responding to society and the events in our world and will one day have a huge impact as its future citizens. I hope in a similar manner, my impact extends beyond [sharpening] mathematical understanding to [supporting students in] how to be productive, kind, discerning humans in our world.

Wong Baesa is resigning at the end of the school year to pursue a career outside of K-12 education. While she says she still fully believes in the importance of educating the future generation, she hopes to be able to do so outside of a classroom setting.

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Kristen Bao (Stein)

Age: 29
Location: Oklahoma
Status: Left teaching in year three

Sadly, I left the classroom after the first quarter of the 2021-22 school year after teaching for just over two years. There were many factors that contributed to that decision.

On the practical side, I spent a great deal of effort on personal financial discipline during the first two years of my career and found success in attaining the short-term financial goal I had set for myself (saving up a six-month emergency fund). I also bought my first car, with $2,500 cash. So in year three of teaching, when I started thinking about my long-term goals and ran some financial planning calculations based on Oklahoma's pay-rate at the time, I found that even if I saved 33 percent of my income, between student loans and saving for retirement (because the compensation from the Teachers’ Retirement System of Oklahoma is not actually enough to live on during retirement), it would take me nearly a decade to be able to save for a down payment on a home. Even though I told myself every day to remember, “You're not in this for the money, you never were,” this realization was incredibly disheartening, and I don't think I was ever really able to get over that throughout the first nine weeks of the year I resigned.

At the same time, I also continued to deal with imposter syndrome. As a new teacher, I constantly felt inadequate, unable to accomplish the feats my veteran coworkers seemed to be completing with ease. I was always wondering when everyone — my principal, my students, their parents, my fellow teachers — would realize that I didn't belong there. These feelings were complicated by the fact that I was actually able to build amazing relationships with everyone in that list. Parents were lavishing me with gifts, words of gratitude and encouragement throughout the year. Students would write me notes telling me how much they loved having me as their teacher. Right before I resigned, my principal had even given me the most positive evaluation I had received since I started. She practically raved about how much I had improved in every area and how much potential she knew I still had to excel even further with time and patience.

But none of that was enough. I knew I couldn't sustain the level of success and productivity that she was depending on, or that my students needed. I had increasingly severe anxiety attacks throughout the first nine weeks of my third year of teaching. Some small thing would fall through the cracks, and I would experience symptoms such as shortness of breath for hours on end, a lump in my throat, being on the verge of tears, headaches and blurred vision. On the day that one of these attacks lasted the entire eight-hour school day, I finally opened up to my dearly beloved mentor teacher down the hall about all of these things. As I drove home after sharing with her, I knew it was time for me to step away.

I experimented with a few other career paths before I became a district executive for the Boy Scouts of America in September 2022. When this job found me, I knew it was an incredible opportunity to participate in an organization that precisely aligned with my passion. I know that I was created to contribute to helping children and families in my community flourish. This is exactly what I get to pour myself into when I wake up each morning in this current role.

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Hannah Coffey (Long)

Age: 30
Location: Petaluma, California
Status: Still teaching
Starting salary: ~$46,000
Current salary: ~$83,000

Can you give a brief overview of what you’ve taught over the past five years?

I have taught the same grade, transitional kindergarten (TK), since I started teaching, but I have moved schools twice. In the 2021-22 school year, I moved to an elementary school in Santa Rosa, California. It was a significant raise in pay, but a 30-minute commute. That school has a lot of strengths and I learned a lot, but it had its flaws and complications as well. Long story short, I left. I almost stopped teaching.

Then, I got my dream job at Sonoma Mountain Charter. It is a wonderful school with a wonderful staff. It is close to my house, and I have the privilege of working with my mom, who is one of the school counselors in the district. It is an arts charter school, and there are a lot of ways teachers and students participate in the arts. Students learn to play instruments, participate in plays and engage in an amazing art adventure week, in which students are placed in mixed-age cohorts, and work on art projects together. As an artist myself, it is so nice to get to use my art degree so much in my professional life.

What has been the most challenging and rewarding part of your job?

One of the challenges I faced was with varying opinions over COVID protocols. My mom has cancer and my husband has asthma, so COVID could have been very serious for either of them; as a result my husband and I were incredibly careful. That part is still hard. I wear a mask to this day. At one point, I decided I was not going to wear a mask, and seven days later, I got COVID for the first time. So I went back to masking.

The most rewarding part of teaching is the ability to help shape the future. It is a big responsibility that I take very seriously. I try to teach using multicultural materials. I teach about gender inequality and how to be kind, empathetic and accepting. Setting the foundation for most more advanced skills is amazing. A huge part of teaching littles is helping them develop a love of learning. I have to tell my students that we can’t read words on the board anymore because it is time for recess, and they beg me to continue reading. They LOVE asking questions and discovering new things. It is really amazing and truly fun!

What has been the most surprising part of your teaching experience so far?

When we returned to school in March 2021 … I had a third of my class in person in the morning, another third of my class online at the same time, then the last third in person in the afternoon. [I was surprised by] how different the kids were from how they were at home [on Zoom], as well as some of the parenting choices that we were experiencing. It was hard to get a hold of parents, and we had to tell parents to put pants on and not swear while their kids were Zooming.

How do you think starting your career during the height of COVID-19 shaped your teaching experience and approach?

I think that starting my career at the height of COVID shaped my teaching experience in a lot of different ways. We were asked to do so much. I had 28 students, and I taught a class that combined TK and kindergarten students. I was in graduate school. I was planning my wedding (which was ultimately postponed). My mom was in treatment. My [now] husband wasn’t working. It was an extremely stressful time, and then we went on an extended spring break and never came back that year. I remember driving around to my students’ houses at the end of the year just to say goodbye from a distance.

Teaching has gotten so much easier, which is normal, especially if you stay in the same grade. But it’s also because [other parts of my life have slowed down]. I graduated with my master’s degree, so that stress was gone. And I moved schools, so I was making more money, so that stress was gone. Then we had the wedding, so that stress was gone. The vaccines came out, so at least we were a little protected. Now I don’t have a long commute, I teach in a well-paying district, and I have a great team of early childhood educators I get to work with. I get to focus on making the kids’ experience at school the best one they could possibly have.

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Mikia D. Frazier

Age: 27
Location: Hinesville, Georgia
Status: Still teaching
Salary: N/A

Can you give a brief overview of what you’ve taught over the past five years?

I have been extremely fortunate to continue teaching my favorite grade level, fourth grade, and my favorite subject, English language arts (ELA). Since starting my career, the dynamic of my department has changed a few times, so I’ve taught ELA by itself as well as ELA and social studies. Currently I am on a team of two [fourth grade teachers], so I teach ELA and social studies while my partner teaches math and science.

What has been the most challenging and rewarding part of your job?

The most challenging part of my job has been helping my students recover from the pandemic, in terms of educational progress and social-emotional development. My current fourth graders experienced “COVID learning” during their formative years of kindergarten and first grade. While they have been back to “regular school” for a few years, I can still see the social and emotional [gaps]. However, I do feel that they are making great strides.

Another challenging part of my job has been managing all that is expected of teachers inside and outside of the classroom. We wear so many hats and make so many decisions in a day. Our students, colleagues, communities and families need us to show up for them — all in different ways. Sometimes, it can get very overwhelming. Juggling being a teacher with being a full-time student has also been a very interesting feat. Since my first year teaching, I’ve earned two degrees — my master’s degree in 2020 and a specialist degree in 2022. I’m currently working toward my leadership certification and hope to begin a doctorate program soon. The balancing act is definitely a challenge, but I’m working extremely hard to achieve my personal and professional goals while continuing to enjoy the profession.

The most rewarding part of my job is, and will always be, the relationships that I build with my students. This year is definitely a full-circle moment, as I have realized that the first group of students I had when I entered the profession in 2019 is going to high school next year! Whenever I see them out and about in the community, they still talk about memories [from that year] and how I’m their favorite teacher. While teaching can be a very tough and demanding job, the children always find a way to remind me of my impact on their lives.

What has been the most surprising part of your teaching experience so far?

The most surprising part of my teaching experience thus far is the fact that being a teacher never stops. Of course, I always knew it was a full-time job. I knew that teachers spent weekends and late nights working on all of their school tasks. But I didn’t understand the reality that teaching becomes such a part of you, sometimes you can’t turn it off. I often catch myself randomly thinking about a new strategy to try or a new project to do. It surprises me that sometimes I simply just cannot turn it off.

How do you think starting your career during the height of COVID-19 shaped your teaching experience and approach?

Starting my career at the height of COVID literally altered my brain chemistry as an educator. It was as if one of the wildest things that could ever happen actually did. I learned in that first year that anything can happen, and we have to learn to adapt. We were thrown into an entirely different realm of education with no handbook. Most of us were building the plane as we were flying it, but ultimately we landed safely. That first school year showed me that teachers are capable of absolutely anything. I figured that if I could survive that, I could survive anything. The experience taught me to adapt, [helped me develop] an immense level of patience and it taught me that I could persevere through a lot.

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Steve Middleton

Age: 46
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Status: Still teaching
Starting salary: ~$56,000
Current salary: ~$58,000

Can you give a brief overview of what you’ve taught over the past five years?

Over the past five years, I've experienced both consistency and transitions in my teaching career. I started at one public middle school where I taught digital communications, and then moved to a different one in the district, called Bush Middle School. At Bush, I teach technology applications, computer science and robotics.

What has been the most challenging and rewarding part of your job?

In the past five years, the most challenging part of my job has been dealing with unsupportive colleagues at my previous school.

The most rewarding aspect has been implementing innovative strategies in my classes, such as starting a weekly email initiative in which students send an email home to their parents/guardians every Monday with an update about their learning. In the emails, students include a screenshot of their grades across all classes, two fun or interesting things from school, and a plan to complete any missing assignments. I’ve been doing this for about three years now, and it serves a few purposes. It breaks a negative cycle where parents only hear from their child’s school when something is wrong. It empowers students to take responsibility for their learning. It promotes transparency among students, teachers and families.

The weekly email is not schoolwide yet. However, word has gotten out, and my district has asked me to give a training on it to other technology teachers in the district for next school year.

What has been the most surprising part of your teaching experience so far?

The most surprising part of my teaching experience thus far has been witnessing the incredible resilience and determination of my students. Despite any challenges they may face, they continue to push forward and demonstrate their eagerness to learn. This unwavering dedication has been both humbling and inspiring, as it serves as a constant reminder that the work I do is ultimately about the students and their growth. Their perseverance has undoubtedly played a pivotal role in motivating me as an educator.

How do you think starting your career during the height of COVID-19 shaped your teaching experience and approach?

This unprecedented situation compelled me to think outside the box, develop innovative solutions and adapt to constantly changing circumstances. It also taught me that fostering independent learning skills in students must begin at an early age. The pandemic served as a powerful reminder that, just as I cannot drink water for them when they are thirsty, I cannot absorb knowledge on their behalf — the effort to learn must come from within.