On Teachers' Pay and Why It Matters

 I'm reading the book Think Again, by psychologist Adam Grant, and I noticed a footnote talking about the importance of paying your workers enough. Mr. Grant was speaking in general terms, but I think that this footnote on page 114 has special application to the teaching profession:

Pay isn't a carrot we need to dangle to motivate people -- it's a symbol of how much we value them. Managers [administrators, for schoolteachers] can motivate people by designing meaningful jobs in which people have freedom, mastery, belonging, and impact. They can show appreciation by paying people well.

It really is that simple. 

A New Quilt

 Twelve years ago, I wrote about how an old quilt made me cry as our full and busy home became an empty nest. That quilt was powerfully symbolic. It spoke of my love for the mountains, and of how I shared that love with my children and passed it on to them.

Around that time, my sweet wife started making another quilt for me -- another quilt covered with images of mountains and trees and lakes and sky. Life got in the way, and it took her until today to finish it. This quilt also carries powerful symbolism, but it's not just symbolic of my love for the mountains. It's symbolic of a woman's love and devotion in the face of all obstacles.

I'm a very lucky man, and I know it.

AND THEN, AND THEN:

She had leftover fabric, so she made two pillowcases to match the blanket!

Old Cowboys Never Die, They Just Ride off into the Sunset

October was a difficult month for me. It marked the death of one of the most influential men of the 20th Century, even though you may never have heard of him.

Donald Albert Depew was born on December 20, 1933, in Raymond, Alberta, Canada, in the Mormon farming and ranching colonies of southern Alberta. His father was William Warren Depew, and his mother was Leah Enid Lybbert Depew. The Depews were from Payson, Utah, and the Lybberts were from Vernal, Utah. They were all ranchers and horsemen, and lived on the plains of southern Alberta, east of the Canadian Rockies.

One day when Don was two years old, his father was in the barn taking care of the horses, when something spooked them and they ended up trampling him to death. The Depew and Lybbert clans rallied around Enid and her two young children. Don was raised as much by his aunts and uncles as he was by his mother, and never lacked for love, nurturing and good role models. 

When Don was 5 years old, Enid married a good man named Bill Hass. Enid and Bill had four children, which, together with Don and his older sister, made six children in the family. The family moved around Alberta as Bill pursued different jobs, ending up in Edmonton in 1945, at the end of World War II.

Starting at age 10 ½, Don would live with his family during the school year, and then spend summers on his uncles’ ranches in southern Alberta. He became a cowboy, working alongside the other cowboys on the ranch, learning about horsemanship and care of horses and cattle. He developed a deep love for horses, which stayed with him his whole life.

He also developed a solid work ethic, which guided his life and which he passed on to his children. In fact, I can remember working on the house with him, at age 17, and hearing him say to me, “I finally taught you how to work, and now you’re leaving.” It sounded like he was complaining, but I think he was pretty satisfied.

He got his first job at age 12, as a paper boy for the Edmonton Journal. This gave him money in his pocket and taught him independence and self-sufficiency. In the summers, he would line up substitutes for his paper route so he could go down south and work on the ranches. At age 16, he bought his first car, a 1940 Nash, and used it to drive the kids in Edmonton to early-morning seminary.

At a youth dance, he noticed a pretty little 16-year-old girl from school, named Patricia French. She was not a member of the church, but was attending the dance with some friends. She was quite different from the “pruny Church girls” his mother kept trying to set him up with, but who did not interest him at all. Don began dating Pat, got her connected with the missionaries, baptized her, and added her to the list of kids he would pick up for early-morning seminary.

Don wanted to go to college, and had applied to BYU to study geology, but then the Korean War broke out, and those plans were put on the shelf. 

Bill Hass decided to start a long-haul trucking business, and eighteen-year-old Don became one of his drivers. Don drove trucks across Canada and the United States, but he knew this wasn’t the kind of job he wanted to do long-term. Besides, he and Pat were courting by now, and he wanted to spend time in Edmonton with her.

In March 1954, Don and another driver were at the customs office on the border in Manitoba, when they received word that Bill had died of a massive heart attack. They hurried home, and the family ended up selling off the trucking business. Don and his mother used the money from the sale of the trucking business to build a boarding house, which they called the Hasshold. The income from the boarding house supported his mother for many years, and one of the boarders ended up marrying Don’s sister Carolyn.

With his mother taken care of financially, it was time for Don to start his own family.

Don and Pat got married in 1955. He was 21 and she was 19. Pat was working as a school teacher, and Don got a job as a lab technician in Edmonton, in the exciting new world of plastics, with an up-and-coming company called Canadian Industries Limited. They had four children: Cheryl, Ray, Craig, and Doug. After Doug was born, they put their station wagon and their children on a train and moved from Edmonton to Toronto, Ontario, again with CIL. 

From there, Don followed new job opportunities and promotions across the border, to West Chester PA, Wilmington DE, Montreal Quebec, Naperville IL, Detroit MI, Marietta GA, and Bainbridge GA. His willingness to work hard and to move around allowed him to work in sales, engineering, research and management, eventually retiring as VP of Engineering for Amoco Fabrics, in Atlanta, without ever having a college degree. He was proud, however, of his certificate for the Executive Management course he took at the University of Michigan late in his career.

Don and Pat added Susan to the family in Toronto, and Shelly in Wilmington, making a total of six children. Over the years, they have taken in strays, that is emancipated or foster teens, and young adults, single or married, who needed a hand up. So, depending on how you count it, you could say they have dozens of children.

In 1975, Pat started showing symptoms of what was finally diagnosed as multiple sclerosis. They soon moved to Georgia, so that Pat could get better medical care. Don arranged his work responsibilities and his residence and office locations, so that he could drop everything and be home in less than 15 minutes if Pat needed him. He took training to become her primary caregiver, and he took care of her for 12 years. His devotion to her, and his single-minded care for her, was a powerful example to his family and to others, who have attempted to emulate his devotion in their own marriages.

Pat passed away in 1988, at the age of 52. Don was 55. In Pat’s final years, one of the frequent visitors to Don and Pat’s house had been Pat’s best friend, Linda Bess. Before Pat passed away, she told Don and Linda (separately) that she wanted them to get married. So they did.

Don and Linda lived in Acworth GA and Dothan AL. They went on adventures, including trips to Ireland, Hawaii, the Mediterranean, and their timeshare in Colorado. Linda supported Don’s passion for horses, and they more or less adopted each other’s grandchildren. The marriage ended in 2014, after 25 years, but they kept in touch, and the grandchildren and Don are still close.

Don and Linda served a mission together in Nauvoo, Illinois. Don worked as a sealer in the Atlanta and Birmingham temples, and this gave him the chance to officiate at the marriages of many of his grandchildren.

Because Don was raised on the ranches in southern Alberta, he became an avid horseman and had a passion for horses his entire life. He had a special interest in quarter horses. In Montreal, he built a barn for two horses in the backyard, and arranged with the neighbors across the road to keep his horses in their pasture. He eventually acquired some real horse property in western Cobb county. Later, when his son Doug bought some property for a horse farm in Acworth, Don served as barn building contractor, groomer,  feeder, ranch foreman, head horse wrangler, chief hay thrower, bushhogger, fence fixer, horse shoeing supervisor, tree cutter, and ditch digger for as long as he was able. Doug has inherited Don’s passion for horses and continues the tradition of horsemanship. There will always be cowboys in the Depew clan.

In Don’s later years, Doug and his family made room for him in their home. They gave him a great deal of independence, dignity and private space that allowed him to grow old gracefully. He enjoyed holding court in his chair in the sunroom, entertaining the third and fourth generation, and driving around the ranch in his golf cart with the big knobby tires. The siblings from Way Out West acknowledge and appreciate the unmeasurable time and resources that Doug and Vicki, and also Sue, put into caring for Don all those years.

Don enjoyed presiding at family reunions, where four generations would get together to honor him, and to enjoy each other’s company. The first reunion was at Doug’s ranch in Acworth. It was organized by his 12-year-old granddaughter, Ashley, who has since turned event planning into a career. Since then, reunions have been held in Morganton, Georgia, and Estes Park Colorado. 

Don Depew leaves behind two sisters and a sister-in-law, six children, 28 Depew grandchildren, 4 Bess grandchildren, 37 great-grandchildren, many nieces and nephews, and the hundreds of people who have been affected by his generosity, his faith, his service, and his friendship. His legacy extends beyond his immediate descendants to include all of the people whom he and Pat took in and sheltered and nurtured over the years, and the many people that he touched in a lifetime of teaching and leadership.

Photo credit: Gene Praag

That Sunday School teacher from Finland

 Preface: This is a letter I wrote to my kids on 7 February, 2011, about a Sunday School teacher I had when I was a youth. I don't want to lose this story, so here it is.

Hi kids,

Here's the story I promised you, about my favorite Sunday School teacher ever.

For my last two years in high school (from mid-sophomore year to mid-senior year), we lived in Hawkesbury, Ontario and went to church in Pointe Claire (Montreal), Quebec.  It seemed like our Sunday School class couldn't keep a teacher for more than three weeks.  I don't recall doing anything specific to drive them out, but apparently we did something to make them go away.

Ironically, the Sunday School teacher that lasted the longest was the one that was the least prepared and the least effective.  Every Sunday, he would fold the lesson manual back on itself, breaking the spine of the book, bury his nose in the page, and start reading. The. Lesson. Word. By. Word.  The only time he looked up was to pick someone to address a question to -- again, a question from the book.  Where the manual said "Ask:  What did ...?" he would look up, say "Andrew?" and then bury his nose in the book and ask the question:  "What. Did. ...?"  Andrew would answer something -- anything! -- and the guy would say, "Correct." -- and then read the answer out of the book!  Out loud!

I didn't learn anything Gospel-related from that teacher, except how NEVER to teach.

The Sunday School teacher I remember the most was this one little lady, an immigrant from Finland, who didn't speak English very well.  I think that she was very poor.  I also think that she put hours into preparing every lesson.  How do I know?  Well, it's a simple thing, and it may make my tender-hearted Mountain Woman tear up just a bit.

Nabisco Shredded Wheat, not the spoon-size stuff but the big stuff, was packaged three biscuits at a time in a wax-paper wrapper.  The wrappers were stacked in the cereal box with pasteboard spacers between them, so the biscuits wouldn't crumble.  I was very familiar with those spacers because Shredded Wheat was cheap and our family ate a lot of it. 

Every Sunday, this Finnish lady would pull her lesson plan out of her bag, written in pencil on several of those Shredded Wheat spacers.  The spacers were about four inches wide and ten inches long.  She would hold them like a hand of oversized playing cards, and constantly shuffle through them as she taught her lesson.

One Sunday, she handed out triple combinations for us to use to look up something.  (This was back in the days before President Spencer W. Kimball, and before his counsel that parents should obtain all the scriptures for all their children.)  I ended up with one that didn't look quite right.  She had us turn to a section of the Doctrine and Covenants, which was easy to find because all the sections are numbered, right?  So are the verses!  But the words in my book were all gibberish.  She had intentionally snuck a Finnish D&C in with the books she was handing out! 

She was illustrating a point that she was trying to make, by giving one of us a book that we could not read or understand.  Today we call that an "object lesson."  And you can believe that all of us in that class caught the object lesson that Sunday.

She never said "I love you kids," probably because that didn't come into style for a few years after.  Maybe she did love us; I don't know.  But she was a model of devotion and of preparation that I have followed ever since -- and of humility! creativity! and so much more of what makes a great teacher out of anybody.

--

Love

Dad

Word Peeve: Cue vs. Queue vs. Que

I've noticed a new fingernails-screeching-on-chalkboard trend in the written word, both on paper and in electronic media.

It doesn't happen with the spoken word, because all three of the words involved are pronounced the same.

Here's the situation.

Consider someone telling a story, and then writing a sentence like this:

"Queue the angry customer."

Here's the issue.

Cue is the word you're looking for. It's a stage direction. It's used in plays, movies, and newscasts. It's a signal for someone to take their place onstage or to speak their line, for example. It's also used to call for a sound effect, a spotlight, a brass band, and so on.

Queue means to stand in line, or to form a line -- a queue of people, waiting for something, like boarding passes at an airport.

Que is an alternative spelling of queue, useful in Scrabble.

Word Peeve: "Myself" and other reflexive pronouns

I'm here today to talk about the practice of using "myself" instead of "I" or "me".

I'm tempted to blame this one on the officious, pompous, pseudo-authoritarian, petty tyrants on the front lines of the Transportation Security Agency, because I've heard them commit this assault on the English language more than anybody else. But that may not be fair; they may have picked up the practice from other officious, pompous sources.

We need to start by reviewing first, second, and third person, because reflexive pronouns don't make sense unless you understand this simple concept.

Then we need to quickly review subject and object pronouns, followed by reflexive pronouns.

Don't worry; this is a quick and easy read. It will help you avoid sounding like a clod, a boor, a petty tyrant, or a TSA agent.

First, second, and third person

Remember learning about first, second, and third person? What?? You never learned about them?

Okay. Here's a quick review.

First person: "I" and "me"

Imagine you're marooned on a desert island -- not even a volleyball to keep you company. There's only one person on the island. And every time you talk about that person, you use the pronoun "I". 

• "I'm hungry."
• "I need to go to the bathroom."
• "I am all alone."
• "That snake bit me!"

Second person: "You" -- just "you"

Imagine somebody else washes up on the island. Now there are two people. You were there first, so you are the first person. The other castaway got there second, so they are the second person. Every time you talk about that person, you use the pronoun "you".

• "Where did you come from?"
• "Phew! You stink!"
• "Here, let me fix that for you."

Third person: "he/she" and "him/her"

Imagine that yet another castaway washes up on the island. Now there are three people. The newcomer is the third person. When you address the newcomer directly, you use the pronoun "you", just as before. But when you are talking about the newcomer to the second person that showed up, you use the pronoun "he", "she", "him", "her", or "it" as appropriate.

• "Is it even human?"
• "She looks like she's dying of thirst."
• "He has fish bites all over him!"
• "Quick, let's get her out of the sun."

What about when you have to combine them?

When you are talking about more than one person at a time, the order always goes third, then second, then first. This is not a rule of grammar as much as it is a rule of centuries of common courtesy.

• "You and I are gonna have fun together!"
• "He and you both have the same sneakers." (This one has evolved over time, and "You and he both have the same sneakers" sounds less awkward than it used to.)
• "Can he and I go out to play?"

We'll skip plural pronouns for now, like "they", "them", and "us".

Enough about persons. Now let's talk about types of pronouns.

Subject, object and reflexive pronouns

Subject pronouns

Pronouns can be subject pronouns, used as the subject of a sentence. The subject pronouns are: I, you, he, she, it, we, they.

Examples of subject pronouns.

• "Mom, can I go to the store?" 
• "John and I were best friends."
• "You are ugly."
• "He did it!"

Object pronouns

Pronouns can be object pronouns, used as anything except the subject of a sentence. The object pronouns are: me, you, him, her, it, us, them.

Examples of object pronouns:

• "Give the bowl of ramen to her."
• "Jeff punched him in the nose."
• "You don't like me? Sob"
• "The wave washed them out to sea."

Reflexive pronouns

This takes us to reflexive pronouns. Pronouns can be reflexive pronouns, when they reflect back on the person or thing that is the subject of the sentence. The reflexive pronouns are: myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves.

Examples of reflexive pronounces:

• "Ouch! I poked myself in the eye!"
• "It's my birthday, so I'm giving this gift to myself."
• "Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself! Heeheehee"
• "Why is Matt saluting himself in the mirror?"
• "And so the wave falls in on itself."

The Criminal Misuse of Reflexive Pronouns

The reflexive pronouns seem to be abused the most by people in positions of supposed authority, such as bureaucratic officials, low-level administrators, and TSA agents at the airport security line. Mostly, but not exclusively, petty tyrants. But they're not the only abusers.

Any use of a reflexive pronoun where the reflexive pronoun does not agree with the subject of the sentence is wrong. Wrong. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.

It makes the user sound pompous and stupid.

Examples of abuse of reflexive pronouns, and what to say instead:

Wrong: "Please return all completed forms to myself."

Right: "Please return all completed forms to me."

Wrong: "Myself and my fiancé have known each other for three years."

Right: "My fiancé and I have known each other for three years."

Wrong: "By her actions, she was disrespecting myself and all other veterans."

Right: "By her actions, she was disrespecting me and all other veterans."

Wrong: "I was sick, so she did all the grocery shopping for myself."

Right: "I was sick, so she did all the grocery shopping for me."

Wrong: "Except for myself, nobody was injured."

Right: "Except for me, nobody was injured."

Better: "Nobody was injured, except for me."

Even better: "I was the only one injured."

Do it right. Don't make a fool of yourself.

Word Peeve: "stepping foot" versus "setting foot"

 Here's a recent one.

Sometime in the last 20 or 30 years, people started misusing the phrase "set foot" by subsituting "step foot" in its place.

"Step foot" seems to be a combination of "set foot" with the simple verb "step".

Usage examples of "set foot"

• "I'm never setting foot in that church again."
• "He was attacked before he could even set foot on French soil."

The phrase "set foot" implies a word like "my" or "his", or even just plain "a". It's the act of putting something, in this case a foot, in or on someplace.

• "I'm never setting (my) foot in that church again."
• "He was attacked before he could even set (a) (his) foot on French soil."
• "He was attacked before he could even set (his) foot on French soil."

Usage examples of "step"

• "I'm never stepping into that church again."
• "He was attacked before he could even step onto French soil."

"In" becomes "into" and "on" becomes "onto", but with those slight variations, "step" and "set foot" both work. "Set foot" sounds more sophisticated.

So what about "step foot"?

"Step foot" makes no logical sense. While, as I've shown, setting foot is about the same as putting a foot someplace, there is no similar construction for "step foot". Nobody says "Now, step your foot here and then step it there." People say "set your foot here", and they say "take a step here". But that's different. "Step your foot" sounds ignorant and hillbilly -- and so does the simpler "step foot".

Historical usage

As with other word peeves, I can't completely justify my position by referring to historical usage.

"Set foot" dates back to the 1600s.

"Step foot" dates back to the late 1800s. It was condemned by scholars back then then as a misuse of the original phrase, but it survived in popular usage. So even though it's still wrong, it has the weight of history behind it.

During the entire 20th Century, editors and English teachers were mostly successful in stamping out the incorrect usage, but as I pointed out, it has flourished again in the 21st Century. I think it's because the rising generation (or maybe two generations) did not receive the rigorous schooling in grammar and language that their parents and grandparents received.

Bottom line

The correct usage is "set foot" -- or, in the interest of simpler speech, "step". But don't use "step foot". It makes you sound uneducated.

About guns and classrooms

Introduction

Columbine, in 1999, wasn't the first school shooting, but its 15 dead and 24 injured, and the drama surrounding it, certainly caught everyone's attention.

Sandy Hook, in 2012, wasn't the first elementary  school shooting, but its 27 dead, an unnecessary and altogether preventable number, also caught everyone's attention.

Virginia Tech, in 2007, doesn't register in many people's memories, maybe because it was at a university, and all of the victims were legally adults, even if they were students. But its 33 dead should catch everyone's attention.

And now in 2022, Ross Elementary School, in Uvalde, Texas, adds its 19 dead and 2 injured to the list.

These are only the landmark school shootings. Many more, while still horrifying, and memorable to some, are largely ignored or forgotten by everybody else.

My Chuck Norris moment

I was a schoolteacher for two years, starting in 2006. It was only seven years after Columbine, and it was seven years before "Run-Hide-Fight". Active-shooter drills were a regular part of school life, and we had several of them throughout the school year. That is to say, while we didn't have "Run-Hide-Fight", we had the "Hide" part down pretty well.

Columbine showed us, and other incidents confirmed, that adults in the school -- teachers -- were likely to get killed early in an assault. One would think that, with the adults out of the way, it would be easier for the shooter to pick off the kids.

Every time we had an active-shooter drill, I would hide all 30 kids in a corner of the classroom. I would turn off the lights, and I would lock and barricade the door. Then I would position myself between the silent students and the door, as close to the door as I could get without being seen.

I am, emphatically, not a macho he-man type. But this, I figured out on my own: if a shooter were to crash his way through my locked and barricaded classroom door, I would go Chuck Norris all over him. If I was going to die anyway, I would go down fighting. Forget trying to talk him down -- it hadn't worked for anybody else. If I could do anything about it, the shooter would die before I did.

I never told anybody about that. But at the end of my second year, I was chatting with some of  the boys in my class. I found out that these 12-year-olds had already guessed that I would do something like that, and they had agreed among themselves that they would back me up with chairs, desks, and anything else that they could use as weapons. They knew that their lives were on the line as well. If they were going to die, they would make the gunman pay for it.

Arming teachers: Guns in the classroom

After every one of these incidents, someone again proposes arming the teachers -- having the teachers carry a gun, presumably in a holster on their person, in the classroom. While I was a teacher, I thought long and hard about this. Let me give you my thoughts about a teacher packing heat. I will speak as if I were still a teacher in a public school.

First of all, I'm not against it. I am not against guns. I am not against authorizing teachers to be armed. And I am not against allowing teachers to carry a gun in the classroom. 

BUT.

I am against requiring teachers to be armed.

Furthermore, if you want me to teach with a gun on my hip, then you had better pay me both a teacher's salary and a deputy sheriff's salary. If I'm going to do the deputy sheriff's job, in addition to my own, then I want to be paid for it.

Not only that, but if you require me to carry a gun, then you'd better pay for the gun. And the ammo.  And the holster. And the paperwork. That money is not coming out of my pocket.

Moreover, you'd better pay for my training, and for the hours I spend at the shooting range, practicing so that I can be as proficient with the weapon as I am with my standards-based curriculum. The training must include basic firearms training, specific training in the firearm I am carrying, and how-to-shoot-an-armed-attacker-in-a-realistic-situation training. 

You -- meaning my principal, my school district administration and board, my state board of education and legislators, the voters of this state, and the parents of my students -- had better take that gun and my shooting abilities as seriously as you take my teaching abilities.

And based on what teacher salaries are in this state, you don't take my teaching abilities very seriously. That had better change as well.

I signed up to be a teacher, not an armed guard.

An alternative to arming our teachers: fortify the schools

If you're not willing to pay for all of that, then spend the money to make our schools more secure. 

Give us more on-site armed guards, who constantly patrol the buildings and the grounds, and don't just spend all day in their office, eating donuts and watching the monitors.

Require each teacher, staffer, and student to have a smart-chip photo ID card with them at all times. Don't let anybody into the building without one.

The efficacy of metal detectors has been debated, but still, have metal detectors and X-ray machines for bags and packages at every entrance. If we have them at airports and courthouses, why not have them at schools as well?

Make sure outside-access doors are always locked.

Put effective crash barriers in strategic locations, so an attacker can't ram a vehicle into the building to gain access.

Surround the schools with a security fence, with locked gates or active barriers, just like we have on military bases.

Turn our schools into fortresses. Ignore the fact that, from the inside, they will look like prisons.

Do you object to fortifying the schools? Really?

If you don't want to fortify the schools, then you must turn to a political solution. More than twenty years of ongoing school violence have demonstrated that our governments have neither the courage nor the integrity to do anything about it. We have been asking for a political solution since Columbine, and even before then. It will never happen.

Fortifying the schools is a bandaid. It doesn't fix the cause of the problem. To fix the cause requires more courage and integrity than our current crop of politicians possesses. To fix the cause, two things must be done.

1. Eliminate easy access to guns. I know that most school attacks in China use knives, not guns. But this isn't China.
2. Fix whatever it is that causes people to mount these kinds of attacks. Get rid of the bullying, the shunning, the family dysfunction, the radicalization, the loneliness, the hopelessness, the frustration, the rage, and all of the other contributing factors.

And it's not about immigrants

I'm speaking to the anti-immigrant faction in this section: It's got nothing to do with immigrants. 

Klebold and Harris were white, upper-middle-class kids, and all of their victims were likewise white, upper-middle-class. Same with Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, and Springfield. In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the perpetrator was white, and the victims were Amish, whose ancestors first immigrated to North America in 1715 -- long before your ancestors got here.

Save your immigration-related talking points for some other time. They don't apply here.

Conclusion: final thoughts

Simply put, as a teacher, I will defend my students to the death. I will do my part. But I expect society to do their part.

And remember, I got hired to teach, not to kill -- to build up, not to break down. That's all I want to do.

How to Fix the Teacher Shortage

America has a teacher shortage, and it's rapidly getting worse. Here's what we can do about it.

In these post-pandemic days, teachers are no longer hailed as the heroes that, in March 2020, overnight and on their own, transformed their classrooms into online classrooms and saved the American educational system.

(No, that's not an exaggeration. They really did that. It certainly wasn't the politicians or the buttheaded administrators that saved public education during the pandemic.)

Today, teachers are disrespected by their students and the students' parents, mistreated and abused by their school and district administrators, and exploited as pawns by politicians, ideologues, local activists, and greedy pirates masquerading as "private school corporations" and "charter school corporations."

After going to college or university for four years to earn a degree and a professional certification, they are paid less than babysitters and waiters, and held accountable for things beyond their control.

It's no wonder that teachers are quitting.

They're quitting in growing numbers, and they're not even waiting for the end of the school year. The Reddit group r/Teachers is full of stories of teachers quitting, and telling why they're quitting. It's heartbreaking.

And the rate at which teachers are permanently leaving the teaching profession is accelerating. Leaders are finally recognizing it, and they are starting to panic. The teacher shortage will soon become a genuine crisis, and it will affect every one of you, young and old, in profound ways.

What's to be done about it? I have some suggestions for the leaders who can do something about it.

Treat teachers like the professionals they are. 

Let the teachers design and execute the curriculum -- or give them the freedom to choose their curriculum from the many curricula offered by the textbook companies. Stop telling them how to do their jobs. And give them the budget and the tools they need to do their jobs.

It makes me furiously angry to see other people, non-teachers, trying to tell teachers how and what they should teach. Do you treat lawyers and doctors like this? How about computer engineers? Teachers are trained professionals. Leave them alone and let them do what they are trained to do.

Treat them with respect, and enforce that respectful treatment.

I could write an entire essay about this. 

Many teachers are leaving now because of the disrespect, the humiliation, the danger, that manifests itself daily, in many ways. Teachers deserve to be treated with respect -- from students, from parents, and especially from administrators.

And until they get that respect, they will keep marching out the door. Nobody pays them enough to treat them like this.

Also, protect and defend them. Wait a minute, I need to say that louder.

Protect and defend them!

Teachers are constantly threatened with physical violence, and they're not allowed to fight back. 

Likewise, teachers are harassed, both online and in person, by students and their parents -- and sometimes by members of the community -- and the administrators take no action to stop it.

In addition, teachers are falsely accused of all kinds of misconduct, usually by vindictive students and parents, and their cowardly administrators do not back them up.

For God's sake, keep politicians and ideologues out of the schools.

I really mean "for God's sake."

Here's one example of what happens when you let politicians and ideologues in the door.

Have you heard of Critical Race Theory (CRT)? Do you know a single school in your area where CRT is being taught? No, seriously: can you name a school near you, where CRT is part of the curriculum? Look as hard as you want. You won't find one.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) was developed in the 1970s and 1980s, and is an eye-opening way to view western history. The theory is debated at length at the university level, and some of its underlying ideas have been present in public schools since the 1970s. But the idea that CRT is taught in K-12 classrooms is a straw man, set up by politicians and ideologues just so they could knock it down, and so they could take control of the schoolhouse. Politicians, ideologues, and activists keep trying to force themselves into the educational process. No teaching will happen while we allow this. 

After the battle over CRT goes away, there will be something else to take its place.

Learning will happen, oh yes, but it will not be the kind of learning you want or expect. The unintended consequences of letting politicians and ideologues drive the educational process will haunt you, society, for at least an entire generation. 

Knock it off, already.

Get rid of standardized testing.

I could argue with you about this for hours. It's demeaning, it's misguided, it's a colossal waste of time and money, and it will go down in history as one of the biggest mistakes of this generation.

Standardized testing is a bullshit idea, promoted and administered by bullshitters. (Please excuse the profanity.)

PAY THEM PROFESSIONAL WAGES. 

I have written about this before.

Good grief, how can we expect a college-educated professional to stay motivated, when we pay them less than we pay our waiters and babysitters?! 

Teachers shouldn't have to go out and get second jobs, just to support their teaching habit.

Don't just give "more money" to the schools, or to "education". Make sure that money goes directly into the teachers' pockets.

Remember the old adage, "You get what you pay for."

Fix the family.

Teachers and public schools are not the cause of poor academic performance. Nor are they the cause of the problems with violence, disrespect, and dysfunction among the student body. Studies have testified to this, over and over again, and yet we keep laying the blame on the teachers and trying to fix things in the classroom. It's not the teachers' fault, and the fix isn't in the classroom.

The root cause of these problems lies with the family that each student comes from. Put the blame where it belongs, and fix the problem at the root cause: the family.