Since the COVID-19 pandemic, MCPS has struggled to find new teachers and substitutes. Less students are becoming teachers, and a lot of older, experienced teachers are starting to leave. To address the issue, Montgomery County has started taking more measures to hopefully increase interest in teacher or substitute roles and employment.
In 2022, “5,500 teachers statewide left their jobs for various reasons” and in post-pandemic times, teachers and substitute teachers have started to see more issues in their classrooms.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, student behavior has become worse, with “increased incidents of classroom disruptions from student misconduct (56%), rowdiness outside of the classroom (48%), acts of disrespect towards teachers and staff (48%)” being seen. This poor behavior, especially towards substitutes, contributes to the substitute shortages. Substitute teachers are very important in schools, filling in for classes when teachers can’t. Yet, substitutes have found that the conversion from virtual learning to being face to face in class has been problematic. Students have been known to misbehave more and make problems for substitutes, who are at the disadvantage of not knowing exactly how the teacher runs their class. Teachers even have to threaten their students to be good for their substitutes.
Stasia Decker-Ahmed, who has had experience as a substitute commented on the difficulties of the job. She said on occasions substitutes didn’t get the help they required with the students from administrators. They also didn’t spend enough time with students to earn as much respect from them as a normal teacher would. On top of this, substitutes only had an average starting pay of about $18 hourly, while their teacher counterparts had a starting price of about $26 per hour.
After substitutes started becoming few and far between, teachers who had been working for years started quitting their jobs —one reason being that, because of the substitute shortages, MCPS began assigning teachers to fill in for other absent teachers during the periods meant to be used for lesson planning or grading. This put more stress on the teachers to finish additional work, and combined with the increased bad behavior of students that they also had to deal with, their workload piled up. Teachers with families at home had to work longer hours to finish lessons on time. The heavy workloads and stress could lead to teacher burnout for some people.
Because of these conditions, both teachers and substitutes are leaving schools. Montgomery County has started to take counteractive measures to try to solve this dilemma. The MCPS website officially states that they will be increasing class sizes, believing there likely won’t be any teachers who lose their jobs. Though they admit it isn’t an ideal plan, the MCPS board thinks it will help alleviate the shortage problem. With the larger classes, there will be less spaces that need to be occupied by other teachers. This plan is meant to relieve the strain of educators, even if it’s just a little, while they work on producing more teachers and substitutes.
Local universities are working together to help the problem as well. The Universities at Shady Grove and Towson University are collaborating with each other to make a new program that will help teachers get their degree faster and easier. Towson’s program on the USG’s campus, will fund two cohorts of up to 20 students each to participate in the degree program designed to equip paraprofessionals with the necessary skills and credentials to transition into certified teachers. Participants will all be current employees of MCPS, each of whom will continue in their current paid MCPS positions while enrolled.” This program will try to produce more teachers to fill the vacancies.
Teacher and substitute salaries have also been increased. The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future is supposed to also help; ‘Pillar 2, High Quality and Diverse Teachers and Leaders,’ is attempting to create better teachers by raising starting pay and encouraging teachers to be National Board Certified, improving the overall education of the students and giving teachers more expertise to handle the students.
The teachers and substitutes are incredibly important to students’ education. These shortages have put a lot of tension in the classroom environments, but MCPS is working through it for a better future for their schools, striving to “transform public education in the state into a world-class education system.”
Written by Sneha Menon
Photo Courtesy of Yan Krukau and Creative Commons