Our country has seen a shortage of teachers this year. Many states are losing tens of thousands of teachers and staff in their school districts. This is a serious issue that many states face. Districts are desperate to get help.

Some schools have resorted to shortening the school days- in some states, the school weeks are only 4 days long. 10% of teachers have quit this year alone. A recent survey of teachers asked them whether they intended to quit in the near future. Half of them said they plan on quitting this year or soon. Because of these issues, over 450,000 students nationwide have started the school year without permanent teachers in their classrooms.

We as a school have seen something like this before. Some Canyon classes, such as engineering, don’t have a teacher this year. Canyon’s solution was to hire a new substitute teacher for the class every month. Students had the choice of staying in a class where the content would be difficult to learn, or choosing another class to take. 

Many teachers are quitting because they are unhappy- the main reason could be the pandemic. Over 800 teachers and staff sadly died in the first year of the COVID outbreak. During this time, schools were shut down and turned to online classes. Because of this, when it came time to return to in-person learning, many kids were acting out more, since they weren’t used to being in the classroom. Some teachers have even reported they’ve been assaulted by students – something that has never happened in the classroom until now. 

A large number of teachers have said that where they teach, students have become too political. Students would make teachers’  jobs more difficult by making everything seem offensive. This also makes kids more hostile toward teachers and other students. Too many controversial topics would appear in class discussions, and teachers didn’t know how to handle them.

Another reason teachers believe this to be the issue is social media. They’re many social media platforms that show videos of high schoolers being very disrespectful toward teachers that have gone viral. Videos like people talking back to teachers, physically getting involved with teachers, and so much more. We’ve been seeing videos like these more recently due to the new app TikTok. Which kids over the age of 12 are allowed to use. Research done by the UK’s Communications Regulator Ofcom showed that children between the ages of 11-19 are most easily influenced by social media. Which can explain why people who have these social media apps are continuing to act out. And with more and more social media apps being created, more people are finding an interest in watching these videos.

We as Canyon students need to be more responsible and respectful to teachers in order to not allow for a teacher shortage at Canyon. If we don’t change as students, this problem could become a larger concern for us. Without teachers, we could never grow to our fullest potential.