NOTE: Teachers' Lounge usually publishes on Saturday, but I will be indisposed all day tomorrow so I have decided to publish this early rather than late.
Teachers who have often believed, "Well, I may not get paid much, but at least I have job security!" are more and more frequently realizing their error. How will this affect our schools and the teaching profession? More past the jump.
"[Our] next (and hopefully) final cut will be in the upcoming year's state budget where we have been told to plan for 3% to 7% reductions," read the final paragraph of a sobering email from my school system's superintendent this past Monday. "I wanted to assure you that we will reduce items and services before considering people. This is a tough time for our area, and I pledge to do everything I can to keep all positions intact."
Well, that's a hell of a way to start the week.
It's good to know that our superintendent seems to genuinely care about keeping everyone employed. He used to be a teacher in our county, and even though he's only been in the top chair for a few months, he seems to be rather upstanding and a man of his word. Other school administrators across the land are agonizing over the very same thing, and they should be applauded for doing all they can to protect their workers, from school-level administrators down to the janitors.
The fact of the matter is, though, that sobering reports like this are forcing a very foreign concept into the minds of teachers and public school employees everywhere: maybe our jobs aren't as secure as we've always thought.
Fellow teachers, when you were going through a grueling student teaching experience, and receiving a rookie's paycheck that barely kept you above the poverty line, what did you tell yourself to help make it all okay? If you're like me, it was "Well, at least I have job security!" No matter how bad the economy gets for you, Mr. Mid-Level-Manager-At-The-Bank, someone has to teach your kids!
Well, now it turns out that someone may indeed be teaching their kids, but there might be 40 other kids in the classroom with them. If things continue to go to hell for us financially, we have been told that employees - even teachers - could be on the chopping block. If the bleak economic news over the past few months has taught us anything, it's that no one is immune to being affected. There could very well come a time, and it might not be far off, when buying less copier paper and serving smaller portions in the cafeteria won't cut it.
Is my job in jeopardy? Probably not. I've been at my school for four years now, and we have four teachers in my department with less seniority than I have. My department chair and I were shooting the bull about all of this the other day, and his impression from our administration was that any job cuts would be handled by simply not replacing teachers who resign. That plan is contingent, of course, on teachers actually resigning; with the job market the way it is, there aren't going to be as many teachers leaving to work for a textbook company or go to law school.
All of this talk led us to a very sobering realization. I thought back to our superintendent's email: we will reduce items and services before considering people. Items and services. Copier paper. Ancillary materials. New books. Computers.
No matter how you cut it, how we teach is going to be affected by our school systems having to cut so much money from the budgets. If we cut items and services alone, it will be enough of a jolt; if they cut teachers on top of that, though, it would alter the nature of the profession fundamentally. We'll be teaching huge classes with fewer resources. My average class size right now is 24, which isn't horrible, but it's hard to imagine going too much higher when one considers all the grading and class preparation that has to be done for so many kids. Any teacher knows that a large class size completely alters the methods used to instruct a class - large classes tend to lead to fewer discussions, less cooperative learning, and a less-stimulating environment for learning is the unfortunate result.
So, with apologies to Jamie Hyneman, I have to declare the myth that teachers have a recession-proof job officially busted. The economic situation will not only affect us personally and professionally, but it will affect the way we go about our jobs.
I'm curious as to how school systems across the land have adjusted to the times. Are there job cuts? Benefit cuts? Fewer resources at your disposal? It's not an uplifting topic, but I think a lot of teachers want to know they're not alone in this struggle.