“Chapel Hill-Carrboro was what people used to call a ‘destination district,’” Spanish teacher Mark Moseley said. “But now there’s just not enough teachers to go around.”
East is one of many schools across the country grappling with the ongoing teacher shortage. Factors such as pay, political intervention in school curricula, excessive work and a lack of administrative and parental support are contributing to increased rates of teacher turnover, teacher dissatisfaction and a decrease in people enrolling in the teaching industry.
“Teachers are not treated very well. Our salaries are not comparable considering the amount of education we have attained, [our] level of education,” said Kelly Allen, a chemistry teacher who has worked at East for over 23 years.
Statewide there has been an almost 60 percent increase in teacher vacancies. Some teachers feel that this problem is caused by a multitude of factors culminating over many years.
“We’re now at the end of the rope and it snapped,” said theater teacher Hope Hynes Love. “Every educator in this state is getting by and making do because we are the people who are in front of the children… and that has been going on for forever.”
Among those problems was the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused lingering problems for teachers and schools.
“I think that some of the opportunities for community across teachers and students have been lost, and that’s nothing that we can control,” assistant principal Brandon Patterson said. “I think we’re in a much better place now, and we still have work to do to make up for that lost time.”
However, East’s problems with teacher satisfaction are particularly pronounced, within both the district and state.
According to the North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions survey, conducted in June of 2022, 53 percent of teachers at East disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement “Teachers are allowed to focus on educating students with minimal interruptions.” This is about double the rate of all CHCCS teachers and a significant increase from statewide teachers’ negative response rate of about 30 percent.
There are several factors that could be impacting East’s higher rates of teacher dissatisfaction, and one of these is the management of parent-teacher relationships.
At East, 58 percent of teachers strongly agreed with the statement that “Parents/Guardians are influential decision makers” on the North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions survey. This is higher than the district wide rate of 37 percent and statewide rate of 15 percent. But while parental influence can be a force for good, it can also become an obstacle for teachers.
“It can become adversarial; it’s really difficult…. Sometimes we have parents who are really aggressive and be constantly emailing teachers,” Allen said. “We’ve had students break the Honor Code… and the parent doesn’t support the teacher in dealing with that. So that, for a teacher, that’s really upsetting.”
When a teacher is faced with the difficult task of communicating with a parent that their child is misbehaving, they depend on the support of the administration to back them.
East CTE teacher of over 25 years Karen Sanders said East’s administration may promise to support teachers, but not actually follow through with it.
“When it comes time [for a meeting with a parent] and the teacher looks behind them to see who’s there, nobody’s there,” Sanders said.
Furthermore, some teachers express frustration as they want to have more input on what goes on inside their classroom and at East.
“I think our staff, especially those that have been here for a really, really long time, want to feel like they’ve been a part of decision making,” an anonymous teacher said. “So when we say things like, we don’t like the hall pass, right. Well, that decision was already made before we can even say anything.”
However, some teachers don’t feel that the problems lie in East’s administration.
“The problem cannot be solved by [East’s administration]. They’re already solving all the problems that they have in their sight,” Hynes Love said. “The solutions are far above interpersonal conflicts [and] inter-system efficiency in this building. It’s easy to place the blame there because it’s what you can touch and it’s what you feel like you can change, but teachers have been doing that for 20 years.”
And some teachers think that East’s administration has made a positive change.
“I feel like the general morale is improved from last year with the new administration,” history teacher Sam Atwood said.
Some of the safety changes made by the new administration have also garnered praise.
“This year, I’ve seen a huge improvement in terms of that stuff, and I really think our administration is working really hard to get things… back to the way it was before [COVID], where we didn’t have to worry about going down the hallway and getting involved in a fight and ending up on TikTok,” Allen said.
However, some teachers point to more general problems with both East’s administration and the teaching career as a whole.
“I think the biggest thing is teachers just want to make sure that no matter what, we are being supported by admin and that they’re advocating for us,” the anonymous teacher said. “I don’t think that we are feeling that way as a staff.”
Some teachers point to a lack of respect given to their profession by some students and the general community as a factor contributing to their dissatisfaction.
“A lot of [the problem] is disrespect from everywhere. The disrespect from the community you work in, the disrespect from the administration that you work for,” Sanders said. “Look at how many students here won’t even consider being a teacher.”
According to Spanish teacher Justin Seifts, he and many other teachers are here because they love the job and they love empowering students. However, at some point it just becomes too difficult for teachers.
“Sometimes that desire to support students, be there, do everything we can, give it all, work crazy hours, is outweighed by other factors, and I think we can see that in the teacher shortage now.”
Students and the shortage: “We didn’t learn anything after second quarter” by Avery Tortora
The student body also faces consequences as East confronts a growing lack of teachers.
“I hate to say it, [but] over my career I’ve definitely seen a decline in retention of teachers. It’s going to fall on students because we’re losing excellent teachers who are experienced, and if you lose that, you end up getting people who have no experience teaching, who aren’t planning to stick around for very long,” said chemistry teacher Kelly Allen. “It affects the school culture and it affects what the kids are learning.”
Many students have experienced the effects of not having a teacher in the classroom. According to January’s ECHO Student Survey, 30.2 percent of students reported being impacted by the departure of a teacher, one of these students is Lara Pagani
“I’m Hispanic, and Spanish is my first language… I’m taking Spanish for the sake of learning the grammar, and not having a teacher there just kind of defeats the whole point,” said sophomore Lara Pagani.
Pagani took Spanish IV last year, and her teacher left for personal reasons. Most of the time the students had substitute teachers that changed day to day, but sometimes they were left with no adult in the room.
“We had to cover a lot of content from the past couple years of Spanish… so [not having a teacher] delayed the education in AP Spanish,” Pagani said. “If we don’t have teachers, we can’t do what we want to achieve.”
Having no teacher hinders many students’ ability to learn. Students in the 2021-2022 Intro to Engineering class have reported similar issues after losing their teacher in quarter one.
“We didn’t learn anything after second quarter,” said senior Evan Milledge, a former engineering student.
Because of the lack of education, students received an automatic 100 for their third quarter grade and didn’t take the final exam.
“It turned a pretty fun class into the most glorified study hall you can get,” Milledge said.
Students enrolled in French classes have also experienced the stress caused by the teacher shortage.
Junior Janet Torres Ibarra, who takes French II, expressed how not having a teacher delays her learning.
“It’s definitely been a setback. I feel like I’m not at the level of other foreign language students who’ve had teachers all year.”
The unpredictability of not having a teacher can make it difficult for students to “adjust to the change of teaching styles constantly,” and become “used to a new teacher,” according to Torres Ibarra.
Image by Hammond Cole Sherouse & Daniel Cefalo/The ECHO
