How to Retain Highly Qualified Teachers

Is the age old memory of the life long teacher becoming extinct? Are we just to accept that long ago were the days where educators entering the teaching profession with aspirations to remain in the classroom until retirement? Why do teachers leave? Can we devise a solution to promote prestige and allure people once again to the teaching profession?

While many areas in education are experiencing teacher shortages the retention of teachers in particular is a critical concern in many schools and districts across the nation. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) mandates that all teachers be “highly qualified” meaning teachers are trained and certified before entering the classroom. These “highly qualified” teachers are usually products of various university certification programs where they acquire pedagogical knowledge imperative to educational applications of academic content areas as well as relative information on ethics, state laws, and educational research. Before receiving the hard earned title of a certified teacher, “highly qualified” teachers are required to successfully pass a series of state-mandated exams. However most, but not all, certification programs include a student teaching component where aspiring teachers serve a short apprenticeship in a classroom with an experienced teacher in their respective academic areas. This student teaching experience allows an opportunity to observe and practice actual implementation of content knowledge, instructional skills, and classroom management in a “real world” setting. Unfortunately, classroom training rarely mimics the complicated stresses associated with the real life application of a trade and comparable to most careers, teaching is a very difficult profession to ...

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...ected to show traits of higher morale and manageable stress in comparison to non CFG participants.

References

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Ingersoll, R. M., & Smith, T. M. (2003). The wrong solution to the teacher shortage. Educational Leadership, 60, 30-33.

Johnson, S.M., & Kardos, S.M. (2002). Keeping new teachers in mind. Educational Leadership, 59, 12-16.

Wilheim, Dewhurst,-Savelis, & Gordon (2000). Teacher stress? An analysis of why teachers leave and why they stay. Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, 6, 291-304.