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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. In this last portion of the show, we usually do call-ins reflecting what Peniel Joseph was just talking about. Call-ins about your lived experience of one kind or another, and for this Labor Day week, they'll all be about jobs that not enough people want to do right now. Jobs with labor shortages. It'll be your decisions to leave jobs experiencing worker shortages or to not enter those fields in the first place.

We'll talk about teacher shortages today. I'll give you the specific question in a minute. Nursing and home health aids and other healthcare worker shortages tomorrow. Police officer shortages on Thursday, and on Friday, it'll be transportation workers which will range from airline pilots to school bus drivers with many people leaving those jobs. Why did you quit your job flying for an airline or being a flight attendant or driving a school bus just as all the school kids and all the people flying for vacation travel have come back after the pandemic drop-off? That'll be on Friday.

Martin Luther King once said no work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance. Dignity is one of the chapter titles in Peniel's book, and by King standards, some of today's important jobs probably aren't providing enough dignity or enough pay, or enough good working conditions to fill all the openings. Why not? Let's mark Labor Day week by having some of those conversations about your lived experience in jobs falling out of fashion, and yes, we do begin with teachers.

This is the day after Labor Day, a classic first day of school although more and more public school systems begin in August these days but the latest stats are that 2 million fewer students are in public schools nationwide than just before the pandemic and various places in the United States are experiencing various kinds of teacher shortages.

Listeners, are you a teacher who decided to leave the profession? Give us a call at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer and tell us what got you into teaching and what factored into your decision to leave. 212-433-WNYC. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of July, there are approximately 270,000 fewer public school teachers and staff that includes cafeteria workers, custodians, and bus drivers overlap with the coming Friday segment than there were in January 2020 but the education workforce is declining.

Teachers, in particular, why for you did you leave? Was it pay, stress and burnout, the increasing politicization of the classrooms, feeling a lack of respect or support from your administration, the threat of gun violence, all of the above? Give us a call and share a little of your experience with us. We have about 10 minutes for this. We went long with Peniel Joseph because he was so interesting but, teachers, these last 10 minutes of the show are for you.

I should say former teachers, or for that matter, people who considered going into teaching recently and maybe you decided against it. 212-433-9692. Tell us why. Well, teacher shortages within certain subject areas like math, Special Ed, other STEM subjects in addition to math and world languages have been an issue prior to the pandemic, perennially. COVID-19 seems to have exacerbated these problems.

The teacher shortage looks different in different areas and varies widely by district. Places affected by teacher shortages include rural areas, traditionally places with high costs of living where teacher pay doesn't keep up, and urban areas with high poverty rates. States with low teacher wages have been in the news recently. Maybe you've seen some of this.

Missouri I heard an NPR segment about this recently. They have an average starting salary of about $33,000. $33,000, the lowest in the country according to the National Education Association of Teachers Union. 25% of districts in Missouri are operating on a four-day week now to try and make up for the low wages and attract more teachers, according to the New York Times. I wonder what the families think about that. Kids going to school only four days. A lot of the kids probably like it.

In Newark, the starting salary for new teachers has been raised from $55,000 to $62,000 in an attempt to address the teacher shortage that that city in our listening area is experiencing and as many of you may have heard in the news, Florida, as we dot from Missouri to Newark down to Florida, is planning to allow veterans to obtain a five-year teaching certificate with no bachelor's degree in order to address their teacher shortage problems and we know about Florida being an epicenter of the education culture wars.

Give us a call. Are you a teacher who decided to move on from teaching or thought about getting in recently and decided against? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Tell us about some of your lived experience contributing to a teacher shortage in various places in our country right now. We'll take your calls right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now to your calls on leaving teaching or deciding not to get into teaching. Let's see. Sorry as I'm manipulating my clicker here. We're going to go first to Charlotte in Larchmont, you're on WNYC. Hi, Charlotte. You left the school system recently?

Charlotte: Hi. First of all, Brian Lehrer, I'm a huge fan. I think I've actually called in before about teaching and I want to say thank you. I'm actually in a unique position. I haven't fully left the teaching profession but I have left the system because I just feel that, especially since the pandemic, the education system is failing and it's failing most importantly students who are not being seen and valued for who they are because everything gets caught up in the bureaucracy of it rather than what's the most important which is children enjoying school and enjoying learning.

This year, I'm actually going to be a homeschool teacher for a family and I'm working with two children, they're siblings, and I'll be getting to really work really closely with them and learn their learning styles and how I can best teach to them as every teacher should have the opportunity to do. I'm looking forward to actually--

Brian Lehrer: Why did you decide-- The alternative route would've been stay and try to give the students that individualism and dignity and everything that you're talking about. Why not?

Charlotte: Well, I'm not in a why not place yet. I feel like I'm right now taking a pause to remember why I love teaching because I was feeling, as many teachers have been feeling, the burnout and feeling like I'm not getting enough support to give children the love and support they need because there are too many children in the classroom and not enough teachers or there's too many things on a schedule or too many things being asked of a teacher and not enough time in the day to do it all.

Brian Lehrer: Got it. Charlotte, thank you so much for calling us. Here's Linda in Hawaii. Linda, you're on WNYC. Hello from New York.

Linda: Hi, Brian. I'm a great fan as well and I've been listening for quite some time. I quit the department of education in 2013. I was a high school teacher for 15 years. I love teaching. I love students but the red tape and the bureaucracy of no support for teachers and the workload is just ridiculous. It's a hundred thousand dollars a year job and until we make a change in our country, we're going to continue to see the decline in what we're seeing happening. The miseducation of American children. It's sad. It's heartbreaking.

Brian Lehrer: Linda, thank you very much. Susan in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hi, Susan.

Susan: Hi, Brian. Great fan. I left teaching March 2021. I was a reading specialist and had taught all through the pandemic from home and Zoom for about a year. Well, about six months actually from March to June, and then we were sent back into the school. My classroom was taken away from me and I was forced to teach students in the hallway and these were at-risk readers and we needed a quiet space where we could really focus on the work that we were doing and we were constantly interrupted by traffic through the hallways, classes, teachers walking through, talking while I'm trying to do that very important reading instruction.

I had to leave. I wanted to do 30 years. I wound up getting to 28 and a half years and I'm sad. I miss my students but I just felt like I wasn't able to do the job I needed to do.

Brian Lehrer: You mentioned the pandemic. There's an essay by a teacher who just left on Huffington Post right now, "Teaching for 11 Years, I Quit My Job," or, "After Teaching for 11 Years, I Quit My Job. Here's Why Your Child's Teacher Might be Next" by Katie Niemczyk.

One of the things she writes is, "We were heroes in the pandemic. We were heroes for five minutes when schools suddenly went remote and teachers bent over backward to make it work, but then came the backlash, pandemic fatigue set in, and we had to be the exhausted voices of reason about logistics and safety, and teachers became the goat." Did you experience that?

Susan: Yes. Well, we were pressured to go back into the buildings, even though many schools were still teaching remotely in Westchester. Then in order to accommodate the actual space constrictions of three feet apart and all that, they had to really use every inch of space in the building. Suddenly, you were just tossed out of any place you were, and then parents were upset that the kids weren't engaged or that the kids didn't have the quality of instruction that had been given in years past. It's very hard to engage children in a hallway,

Brian Lehrer: I guess so. Susan, thank you very much. Kanienie in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hi, Kanienie.

Kanienie: Hi. Good morning, Brian. Thank you so much for taking my call as usual and carving out space for teachers. Yes, I totally agree with that article or the blog on Huffington Post. Yes, I've been a teacher for like 17 years. I was at Harlem Children's Zone and various charter schools and I started out as a teaching fellow with the public school district.

In 2018, I had a first-grade class, with people with dimples. They were the cutest children on the planet and I'm obsessed with dimples, and I was like, "I'm done." Like they're absolutely adorable. I've done high school. I was a director of arts at a high school as well. I was the director of history at Harlem Children's Zone. I've done middle school, high school, even kindergarten, all the way.

The micromanaging of people that come from all over the country, who've never been in an urban setting telling me that I don't know what to do to teach my children that look like me. I grew up like them, and the level of arrogance, and the level of how much more they get paid. A lot of these principals specifically in charter schools, and I know whatever, I'll get in trouble for this, but it's the truth, are not actually certified.

You have people coming from Ohio, from Wisconsin with this, like, pull yourself up by your bootstraps pioneering mentality, "I'm going to go into the hood and I'm going to give these kids this opportunity," and these schools are falling apart. I spoke to a doorman yesterday and he used to be a custodian at a charter school. He said he quit because he was a-- they made him a substitute teacher, which is like--

Brian Lehrer: Kanienie, unfortunately, that has to be the last word, because we're flat out of time for the show, but thank you for that story and your voice and a pretty interesting take from teachers who've left their profession. So much of it has to do with pressure from the top-down not to really teach. Tomorrow we go on to healthcare workers in this series. Stay with us and come back tomorrow.

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