Teacher shortages persisted this school year. What's being done to fill the gap for the next?
For several months this year, Katherine Korakakis' kids had substitute instructors that were "not qualified to teach the subject," said the Montreal parent, whose province started this school year thousands of teachers short.
"It wasn't a math teacher who was teaching math. It wasn't a French teacher who was teaching French."
She was already worried about learning loss after the pandemic, and scrambled to get her teens extra tutoring, a luxury she knows not everyone can afford.
"Having a child score in the high 90s … one year in math and then having a non-qualified teacher coming in the second year and the child scoring a 50 — there's something wrong here," she said.
Teacher shortages have become an issue in nearly every province and territory. Kids facing one substitute teacher after another. French taught by a non-speaker. Relying on uncertified adults to supervise classrooms.
While some governments suggest an aging workforce and growing populations are behind the shortages, teachers themselves point to working conditions. So what's being done to improve the situation for next year?
'Just getting through the day'
In Surrey, B.C., Anne Whitmore noted that in her children' 17-class elementary school, four teachers were on leave as the school year concluded. Whenever a classroom teacher was away, her kids said, they sometimes got a substitute for part of the day, but also likely saw another class's teacher, the librarian, the music instructor and the principal fill in.
"How do you learn in an environment where you have no continuity?" Whitmore asked. "They're trying to scramble and have some kind of educational content, but really they're just getting through the day."
Constantly backfilling others leaves fellow teachers, support staffers, guidance counsellors and administrators delaying their own responsibilities to students, "who now don't have access to those adults when they need them," said Brampton, Ont., high school science teacher Jason Bradshaw.
Alison Osborne, who served as president of the Ontario Principals' Council this year, describes the situation as the worst she's seen in her 17 years as a principal, with administrators "constantly monitoring our phones just to see what the situation we're going to be walking into the next day," she said.
What's influencing shortages?
The overall number of educators in K-12 public schools rose slightly — around three per cent — from 401,286 in 2018-2019 to 413,667 in 2022-2023, according to Statistics Canada, but depending on the region, the figures have wavered during that period.
CBC News asked each provincial and territorial ministry of education about teacher shortages, with B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Quebec and New Brunswick responding. Some cited retirement of an aging workforce and rapid population growth as key factors influencing current shortages.
Limited housing and a higher cost of living have perennially kept more teachers from certain regions, including remote and rural areas, said Clint Johnston, president designate of the Canadian Teachers' Federation (CTF), the national group representing the unions of more than 365,000 K-12 teachers and education workers.
Yet Johnston says today's working conditions are what's behind current shortages, as teachers bail on the traditional 30-to-35-year teaching careers.
"There's a lot of certified individuals in most of our provinces and territories, but … they're not sticking with it," Johnston said from Vancouver. "There's not enough support workers. There's not enough teachers … everyone's workload has gone up and become untenable."
An online CTF survey last fall drew nearly 5,000 responses from Canadian teachers, education workers and principals. While not statistically representative of the 365,000 educators represented by its members unions, those who chose to respond paint a difficult picture.
Nearly 80 per cent of respondents reported struggling to cope, 55 per cent had experienced violence or aggression over the year prior and 77 per cent called students' needs "significantly more complex" than five years earlier.
The constant pivoting educators were forced into during COVID-19 also took a toll, says science teacher Bradshaw. Given that a key pandemic lesson was to take better care of ourselves, "that can mean stepping away from stressful work … where you feel you're being overextended."
Job 'isn't worth the conditions that we're facing'
Some areas are struggling to attract young people to the field, with even brand new teachers experiencing burnout.
Having found engineering work isolating after obtaining a bachelor's in biology, Jadine Kirst chose to become a teacher instead since she loved working with kids, felt inspired by lifelong educators she knew and saw the need for more teachers. Her enthusiasm quickly evaporated, however, after just one year teaching Grade 8 in a francophone school in New Brunswick.
"We had students figuring out loopholes so that they could look at pornography on their in-class iPads. We had a few students who threatened my life — one of [whom] needed to have their locker searched for weapons," she said.
Once, asking a student to stop talking mid-lesson sparked a barrage of insults and profanity, with Krist feeling "futile" as she tried to calm his screaming. "I couldn't call the principal; the principal was probably too busy dealing with other students," she said, recalling feeling alone, without any recourse and worn down. She still works in education, but no longer in the classroom.
"People who aren't aware of the reality today still look at teaching as an excellent job with two months off and a great pension, but it isn't worth the conditions that we're facing."
What's being done about shortages
Several ministries of education that responded to CBC News' queries noted ongoing efforts to address the problem, including:
Funding programs for rural and remote teacher candidates to train in their home communities (B.C. and Alberta).
Ontario and New Brunswick are allowing teachers' colleges to accept more students, while several regions have also floated the idea of accelerating or condensing teacher training, including in Ontario (which had initially doubled the length of study a decade ago to stem a vast supply of new teachers outstripping jobs available for them).
Streamlining educator training is of course possible, says Brock University professor David Hutchison, yet he thinks it would likely cut into the invaluable time aspiring teachers spend inside real schools.
He also predicts a negative impact to the parts of teacher training that were added more recently, for instance about student mental health, use of technology and artificial intelligence, or teaching students whose first language isn't English or French.
"These are the new realities of being a student in Ontario and other provinces as well and we have an obligation to prepare [new teachers]," he said.
While Ontario principal Osborne welcomes any effort to entice people to education, she worries whether they'd stick around without real change to classroom conditions.
"When we talk about recruiting new teachers, new education workers, I'm not sure it's always an appealing environment to work in," she said.
Science teacher Bradshaw wants to see deeper, ongoing investment versus short-term fixes.
"If [governments] want to show teachers that they are valued and respected and give people a reason to come into … and stay in this profession, we have to know that they're going to invest in us long term," he said, including pay that keeps up with inflation (versus sign-on bonuses) and increased mobility, since where a teacher starts may not be where they want to stay.
What do aspiring teachers think?
"Knowing that teachers are needed everywhere is awesome," said teacher-candidate Serzna Issadien, who's nearing the end of a Brock University program mixing an undergraduate degree with a bachelor's of education.
Still, she's uneasy about initiatives that may "just flood the market with more teachers" without adequate training, given the chaotic reality she's already seen, having filled in as an emergency substitute in the St. Catharines, Ont., region.
Bridgette Walpole, another teacher-candidate close to completing her Brock training, is eager to dive into her dream profession despite a belief that most don't really understand the job nor the mix of classroom challenges today.
"From a student's perspective, you see [teachers] handing out assessments. You see them standing at the front of the class delivering content," she said.
"You don't see them creating the actual materials for each and every student that learns in a bunch of different ways. You don't understand the many different hats that they wear…. You're really everyone all at once."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
From child bride to human rights advocate, Samra Zafar's Canadian journey is 'nothing short of a miracle': 'I owe my life to this country'
Yahoo News Canada presents 'My Canada," a series spotlighting Canadians — born-and-raised to brand new — sharing their views on the Canadian dream, national identity, and the triumphs and tribulations that come with life inside and outside these borders. Kindness from Canadians has been a key factor to Dr. Samra Zafar's success — as well as her saving grace. But the beginning of her life in this country had nothing of the kind: When she first came to Canada, it was against her will. In 1996, the 16-year-old Pakistani girl was forced by her parents into marrying a family acquaintance who lived a world away. The explanation she was given for the arranged marriage was simple, but firm. 'It's your destiny,' she recalls. When she joined her husband in Mississauga, Ont., Zafar discovered his initial promises that she could pursue higher education had been nothing but a ruse. Not only that, but the marriage to a man 11 years her senior quickly became an abusive one. With no support in a country that was alien to her — not to mention a baby on the way — Zafar felt chained to her fate. Her first taste of Canadian kindness came at a time when she was at rock bottom. In the early years of her marriage, when she was 21 and her daughter was 2, Zafar was permitted to take her daughter to an early years centre once a week. 'It was my few hours of escape,' she tells me from her home in Toronto. 'Sometimes I would hide under the Credit River Bridge and pull off my hijab so that I could feel the breeze in my hair for a few minutes.' Zafar had to be home at a certain time so she was careful not to linger. One day she was on her way back home walking past a Tim Hortons when her daughter asked for a doughnut. 'I never had money on me but I would find loonies and toonies lying around the house sometimes so I would put them in my pockets or my purse.' On this particular day, Zafar knew she had a toonie in her pocket because she had put it there the night before. In that moment, Zafar remembers feeling a sense of pride that she could buy something for her daughter on her own. At the store, she ordered the doughnut and reached into her pocket. 'I couldn't find it,' she says. Zafar turned her pockets inside out and her purse upside down. Her daughter was contentedly biting into it. Her hands felt clammy and her face turned red. 'The coin wasn't there. I was mortified and so deeply embarrassed,' she says. Suddenly a male voice said behind her: 'Let me get that for you, ma'am.' When she turned around, she saw no judgement in the gentleman's eyes. 'There was just pure humanity,' she says. Zafar accepted the gesture and pushed her daughter's stroller out of the coffee shop and sat on the bench outside. That's when the tears just flowed. 'I felt my life was so pathetic that I couldn't even do such a small thing for my daughter,' she says. 'I felt so powerless.' But that experience compelled her to make the most powerful move of her life thus far. 'That same day I ordered the very first course I needed to complete high school via an independent learning centre,' she says. It would take Zafar six years to obtain her diploma. 'The man's kindness that day was the first step to my freedom.' Everyday kindness became more and more common, encouraging Zafar to take one powerful leap after another. A woman from the early years centre noticed signs of abuse in Zafar even before she could articulate what was happening to her. 'One day, she gave me her phone and a list of numbers to call, saying that I could use the privacy of her office while she looked after my daughter.' The numbers were helplines for women experiencing assault and agencies offering legal aid. She was also saving money via babysitting other children so that she could attend university. 'When I started university I got the admission very late. But when the woman at the registrar's office heard my story, she bypassed the waitlist and enrolled me in the courses I required.' There was the professor who wrote her a glowing reference letter so that she could apply for a scholarship to help pay for tuition. 'I had just made the offhand comment to him that a scholarship would help cover the fees,' she says incredulously. 'Reading what he wrote at a time when I was being abused at home and told that I was stupid, it was more than a recommendation — it was a vote of confidence. It made me feel so proud. I needed to see that.' It was around this time Zafar felt powerful enough to end her marriage. The kindness kept going. She remembers living in campus housing and having a hard day at her lawyer's office. 'Those days I didn't have childcare so many of the friends I made in university would watch the kids for free,' she says. When she got back, there was a note in her dorm room saying the children were at the student centre. When she got there, what she saw made her stop in her tracks. 'All of these students were playing with my kids. One of my girls was being wheeled around in an office chair. The other was engaged in making a drawing. There was pizza. The whole thing was so beautiful to see.' Last year, Zafar graduated from the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University with a specialty in mental health. 'For a girl who was forced into marriage and told that that was her destiny, to being denied education — Zafar now has three degrees, is a physician and is enrolled in the top residency in the country,' she muses. 'It's nothing short of a miracle,' she says. If there's one thing she could change about her adopted country, it's the fact that we have not yet outlawed child marriage, she says. 'In Canada, you can marry at age 16 with parental consent. But in many cases, parental consent is actually parental coercion. And even in this day and age, it continues to happen.' Being in the mental health field has also made her realize there needs to be better access to therapy and supports for everyone, but particularly those from different communities where mental health is maybe more stigmatized, she adds. 'People who have trauma need better access to the tools and supports they need.' Today, Zafar continues to be amazed at the kindness of Canadians. 'There are people who have nominated me for different roles or who have championed me for different awards,' she says. In addition to her now-grown daughters, Zafar has what she calls her chosen family, 'I have this incredible support system. When I graduated from medical school, it was filled with people who love me.' Zafar has made it her life's mission to pay that kindness forward. Not only is she a mental health physician and advocate, she's also a women's rights activist, public speaker, and an author. Earlier this year, she released her book, Unconditional: Break Through Your Past Limits to Transform Your Future. 'I owe my life to this country.'
Washington Post
9 hours ago
- Washington Post
A D.C. school's first graduation is a mix of excitement and mourning
The auditorium chairs were filling up. Mothers and fathers, uncles and cousins anxiously waited. It was graduation day — the first of Digital Pioneers Academy's seven-year history. From humble beginnings at a church in D.C. to two campuses and more than 680 students, the moment the senior class had been working toward was finally here.
Forbes
9 hours ago
- Forbes
Survey Says…Parents Matter In College Admission And They Feel It Is Rigged
Parents' Three-Word Descriptions of College Admission Even if you are not a follower of the long-running game show, Family Feud, you have no doubt heard their 'survey says' tagline. In the game, families compete by guessing the answers to survey questions on a range of topics, and it gets rowdy! College admission often feels like a similar face-off between families, leaving them confused, concerned, and conjecturing. It is not an solitary process where applicants must find their way without support. Experience has shown the critical role of parents in postsecondary planning. After all, we love our kids and want a future for them that is full of success. We also don't want them living in our basement for eternity! Recent surveys reveal, however, just how nuanced and complex this planning process is for parents to navigate. While high school counselors are the most qualified to offer students guidance on college admission and career pathways, they have a herculean job. They often have caseloads drastically exceeding the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) recommended student-to-counselor ratio of 250:1. Counselors are balancing the physical, intellectual, and social-emotional well-being of the students with whom they work, and despite the best intentions, their time and resources are limited. Sadly there are systemic failures. A recent survey from the Niche college search platform found that 1 in 5 juniors never meet with their school counselors, with 17% saying they received no guidance on the college search process. This is consistent with the findings of a 2019 Education Trust report. The reality is that even those of us (I am a high school counselor) who are fortunate to have smaller caseloads are not available 24/7. I am not at the kitchen table on Sunday morning or in the car with families on a summer night when they are often discussing college admission. Who is? Parents, but they often feel left out of the equation. A survey conducted by the American Student Assistance (ASA) found that parents have the greatest influence on their child's post-secondary path. Ninety-one percent of student respondents reported that they discussed their post-high school plans with their parents. Research by the enrollment management firm EAB confirms the ASA findings–the majority of students identify family as the greatest influence on which pathway they plan to pursue. But parents are not getting the information they want and need. A 2024 EAB study found that 73% of parents want direct communications from colleges. It also discovered that students who are not responding to outreach campaigns from colleges have a 47% greater likelihood of applying when a college has their parent contact information. Michael Koppenheffer, vice president of Enroll360 Marketing at EAB says, 'In an era of intensive parenting, it's not surprising that most parents expect direct and transparent communication from colleges. Concerns about cost, value, and campus safety are top of mind for today's parents, and our research shows that many parents now look for open, ongoing dialogue with institutions throughout the college search process. Colleges that engage families early across multiple channels build trust, ultimately influencing where students choose to enroll.' A May survey conducted by College Guidance Network (with whom I work) revealed not just a lack of communication, but also a significant trust deficit. Sixty-five percent of parents report that the system feels rigged against them and they are pleading for transparency, fairness, and insight into how to play the admissions game. While hoping for fairness may be a fool's errand (the process is simply not built for this), transparency and insight are reasonable expectations. Survey respondents volunteer words like "stressful," "confusing," 'tedious,' and "expensive" to describe college admission, and negative associations outnumber positive terms six to one. These attitudes are consistent across income level, school type (private/public/charter), and first‑generation status. Only 11% of parents report feeling 'very confident' guiding their student through the admission process and 63% say they are struggling, missing details, or need extensive guidance. The top concern of parents is that their teen is 'not competing on a level playing field,' followed closely by fear of making costly financial mistakes. As chief product officer at College Guidance Network (CGN), Michael Kolowich designed and conducted the survey of a national sample of 602 parents. He observes that 'college admissions has evolved over time from a straight sprint to a kind of escape room: the clues are scattered everywhere, but parents don't have a master key to solve the puzzle." CGN's research revealed four distinct parent mindsets that can help colleges better understand their concerns and needs: Anxious Planners, Confident Navigators, Skeptical Realists, and Hands-Off Hopefuls. Every one of them is hunting for a different kind of key to solve the puzzle. Here's more on the four segments the survey identified: Parent engagement strategies in high schools and colleges should incorporate the unique needs and concerns that characterize each of these styles. By doing so they will not only provide important guidance to those who are often the primary financial stakeholder, but as the EAB research found, colleges will also increase the likelihood that students in their inquiry funnel will apply. Parents are not just hungry for information about traditional four-year colleges. Judy Goldstein is the senior vice president of communications for American Student Assistance (ASA). She says, 'Nearly 90% of parents are interested in learning more about non-degree pathways for their children, and two in five want schools to start advising students about their post-secondary options as early as middle school,' Goldstein adds, 'Overall, there is a need for widespread access to the information, resources, and experiences focused on diverse post-secondary education and career pathways earlier in students' educational journeys. Doing so will ensure that young people–and their families–are equipped to make informed, confident decisions about the path after high school that meets their needs and aspirations.' The take-home message from all of these surveys is that we need to better support parents who often feel like they are flying without instruments. K-12 schools need to start earlier and be adequately funded to provide the resources necessary, not just for students but for parents as well. Colleges and universities must better understand the needs of parents and others who support applicants and find more effective ways to connect and communicate with them early and often. If not, families will continue to feud and make uninformed guesses as they navigate the escape room of college admission.
