There are not enough teachers
in the United States.
The California School Boards
Association tells us that the state
needs about 100,000 more teachers
to provide high quality education
for students all week long.
We're speaking with local teachers
and experts to try and get to the
bottom of what's going wrong and
what's being done to remedy the issue.
Tonight we're looking at how the
classroom environment has changed
in the world with cell phones,
increased political tensions,
and an ongoing pandemic.
To be a teacher in California right now,
it's it's kind of the worst
of jobs and the best of jobs.
Between the political pressures and
post COVID teachers in California,
and I should probably only
speak for myself, are tired.
I teach freshman English three days
away from the end of my 28th year.
I teach a psychology, and I've done
30 years in the state of California.
Hey, guys, on your reading
question, Kim Carroll
and Dave Wallace
both teach high school within the
Roseville Unified School District.
They have seen decades of change,
kids. Haven't changed.
Their world has changed.
To be a teenager in 2022 is not the same
as being a teenager in the 90s. Just
gonna say it, the phone has changed so much.
The phone has changed so much.
When I started teaching, you know,
to begin a class, there was always
this process you had to go to,
to quiet kids down because they're
all talking to each other.
They're not talking to each other.
They're all sitting in their
desk staring at their phones.
And so to get the class started,
you have to get the phones
out of their hands.
That has all sorts of ripple effects.
It's harder for kids to work in
groups with each other because
they're not used to socializing
in the same way that kids used to
enter the pandemic,
which for students to stay home.
Go through online learning and also
experience mental health issues.
Things have changed dramatically
since the pandemic, honestly,
and one of the biggest problems
that I'm hearing over and over
again is a student behavior.
Student behavior since the pandemic,
probably because of problems with social,
emotional issues, has really gotten bad in
some classrooms and teachers have left.
I have there's one teacher in a row
seat who is like a year from retirement,
eligible for retirement,
and she just decided it wasn't worth it.
Moved to Oregon.
Not to be a teacher just moved
to Oregon and retired because the
student behavior was so bad that
she was having panic attacks in
her car before school every day.
Kids were yelling at her,
screaming at her,
and so she just couldn't do it anymore.
The job of teaching has
become more complicated.
We're also social workers in a lot of ways.
We are mental health
counselors to a certain extent,
students who were not on campus, who
were on zoom for an extended period of time.
The behavior is very different.
They're a lot more immature
coming into high school.
I think it's the.
Academic skills in terms of how
to be a student, how to study,
how to work in a group,
how to focus on an assignment,
concentrate on it.
See it through to the end.
Resiliency,
not just giving up.
During COVID,
there were no extracurriculars.
They didn't work jobs,
they didn't have soccer,
they didn't have clubs on campus.
They just did school.
So now when they're back in school
and wanting to do all those things,
they don't know how to juggle
school and those things.
So we're having to reteach them.
In all of my classes,
for as long as I can remember,
I have talked about wanting them
to leave better human beings.
That as a social science teacher,
I want them to be more aware that
there are more perspectives in
the world than they even know of,
and to ask questions and to listen.
Learn to listen, to be good listeners.
They'll end up being better friends.
They'll end up being
better sons and daughters.
They'll end up being better partners
in life if they can learn to listen
and to accept other perspectives.
Let's
not forget the politics of COVID-19.
I am officially declaring
a national emergency.
Tackling this pandemic
is a national emergency,
akin to fighting a war.
Big political changes in the country.
This is a really serious problem.
We haven't even begun to
see the end of it yet. Now
the schools have become political
sources of tension in the country.
I could see someone not wanting to
face those sorts of pressures and say,
oh, I can find a job with this
company where I could work from home,
or I can go work for the state and.
Out of state jobs,
you can work from home and they
also have a good pension and
good health care and you know,
so it might be something that
would dissuade them.
We were heroes for about 5
minutes and then it was like.
You can't pick your own books anymore.
I mean, we're hired by the state
of California. We have standards,
we have all of those things.
But just that extra pressure from politics,
from parents, from those things are new.
That would potentially scare
me out of the profession.
At this point,
I'm seeing more considering things
in education outside of teaching.
More of them thinking, you know,
I think I want to go to the counting level.
I think I want to go to the district level.
I think I wanna.
I want out of the classroom,
not necessarily wanting to leave the
profession of education altogether,
but wanting to find ways to
love what they do but not do it
in the classroom anymore.
And that makes me sad because I
feel like there's some amazing
teachers who have real connections
with kids that are burning out.
We do want to hear from any current or
former teachers watching this right now.
Please let us know your thoughts about
the changing landscape in the classroom.
All you have to do is just send me an
e-mail at to the point at abc10.com.