The Deeper Dig is a biweekly podcast from the VTDigger newsroom, hosted and produced by Sam Gale Rosen. Listen below, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify or anywhere you listen to podcasts.
Over the summer, and into the first few months of the school year, school districts across the state scrambled to fill not just teaching positions, but also support staff roles, such as custodians, bus drivers and paraprofessionals.
Earlier this week, two Vermont schools — U-32 in East Montpelier and Spaulding High School in Barre — canceled classes due to staffing shortages, amid a spate of absences from Covid-19 and other illness.
Teachers and administrators cite a range of reasons why educators have left the field: pandemic burnout, political clashes over curricula and Covid response, uncertainty about pensions and the potential for higher wages in other fields. Anecdotally, many of these departures are early retirements.
In the years preceding the Covid-19 pandemic, about 360 to 370 Vermont teachers retired each year, according to data from the state treasurer’s office. In the 2020 fiscal year, that number spiked, to more than 460 retirements. It remained high, above 400, in 2021, the most recent year of available data.
In this week’s podcast, two former Vermont teachers describe their decisions to take other jobs. Don Tinney, president of the Vermont-NEA, explains why staffing needs don’t always sync up with enrollment numbers. And James Nagle, chair of the education department at St. Michael’s College, describes how the pandemic impacted teacher training.
Below is a partial transcript, edited for length and clarity.
Riley Robinson: I want to introduce you to Kathleen Hoffman. Kathleen taught high school English in Swanton for more than three decades.
So why did you want to become a teacher?
Kathleen Hoffman: I went to college thinking I was going to be a writer, a great writer. And my professor said to me, now, you’re not going to be great, but you write well. Well, you know, you have the ability to write good essays, those things, but to write and to make money, you have to have something more. So I made the decision to do education. And I started taking education courses.
And decided I wanted to teach high school.
Riley Robinson: She eventually ended up at Missisquoi Valley Union. And she loved it — her students, her colleagues, her community.
I spoke with Kathleen on Zoom, because since August, she’s been living in Fez, Morocco.
When we spoke, she had just started teaching eighth through 12th graders there. She had just moved into a new apartment — so new, she didn’t have much furniture yet.
Kathleen is one of many Vermont teachers who retired early or left the profession in the past couple years. And I wanted to know why.
Kathleen Hoffman: It was Covid. I just felt that I’d done 31 years in the same school district. And things were very, very stressful.
That district was better than other districts, but I just didn’t think teachers were being appreciated for everything we needed to do to try to protect ourselves and students from Covid. From trying to get them caught up from the year that we were for the half year we were closed, to not being allowed by the state to do online classes with students who were in quarantine. They didn’t want to do that. We should have been allowed to do that, to keep them caught up.
We had a number of students who didn’t come in for classes because they were living with grandparents or parents who were immunocompromised. There was a lot of miscommunication. I would get to class and there would be no students.
Riley Robinson: Is there something else that I should know about what it was like teaching at that time, or maybe that you wish more people understood?
Kathleen Hoffman: I think a lot of people don’t understand how much we missed our students. We missed that daily contact. Because for some of our students, that was the way we knew they were okay. There’s so much in our community, it’s a very poor community, and there’s so much trauma and difficulties in the community. And it was difficult sometimes to know that they were safe.
For some of our kids, the only place that they were safe was school, or that they felt safe, and that they felt listened to. Because we know there’s a lot of issues for kids everywhere in the county. And so, we, our school district, delivered meals every day to families, and we didn’t ask who was eating the meals, we simply asked how many people do you need food for? And so we brought food and milk for three meals a day.
Riley Robinson: During the 2020-2021 school year, Kathleen actually worked two jobs. She taught all day. Then after school, she worked at the local hospital as a Covid screener.
Kathleen Hoffman: I worked the six to midnight shift. They needed somebody who was an adult, they couldn’t have a high school student work till midnight. So I was asked to apply. And I mean, I didn’t really apply. I just said, Sure. And they paid me.
Riley Robinson: So she’d drive home after midnight, then every morning, she’d be back at school at 7:30. It was exhausting.
Kathleen said after that year, there was a mixup with the state about her teaching license. After everything she had gone through that year, that was her breaking point. She was done.
But because the world had turned upside down, it also felt like an opening. A chance to try something new.
Kathleen Hoffman: I talked to my daughter. She had graduated and was going off to college. And she said, Mom, why don’t you go? Because I had always wanted to teach overseas. But it just never worked out. And so she said, “Why don’t you go and do it?” She said, I’m going to college, everything will be fine.
Riley Robinson: Kathleen applied to programs in Spain where she could both teach English, and take classes that would certify her to teach abroad long-term. It was really difficult to get a work visa in the European Union, so once that position ended, she applied to jobs in Morocco, because she has family there. But leaving her job, and her community in Vermont, took a leap of faith.
When you sent in your letter of resignation, what were you feeling in that moment?
Kathleen Hoffman: When I finally sent it, I was like, Oh, God, what did I just do? Then at the same time, I was like, you know, this is the right thing. And people were like, Oh, you’re brave. And I said, it has nothing to do with being brave or courageous. It has everything to do with doing what feels right.
And it never didn’t feel right. I mean, I was sad to leave because I had been there for so long. I loved the community and the students and my colleagues, but I knew that it was time to go.
Riley Robinson: Hundreds of teachers retire from Vermont schools every year. According to state data, from 2017 to 2019, it was usually about 360 to 370 teachers.
Then for the 2020 fiscal year, there’s a jump, to 462 retirements. And that number remained high in 2021, at 409.
Lots of these are people at retirement age. But anecdotally, many of these are early retirements. People who were close to the end of their careers and said, you know what, this is really hard. So they exit a couple years early.
That was the case for Kathleen. She was just a few years away from when she had expected to retire. But she was also really worried about the state pension system. She rolled over her pension into a separate account, and left.
Matthew Seager: I had a great experience, you know, as a student. So, you know, something I kind of wanted to do, to be involved with and pay forward, I guess. But, you know, eventually, it just became too much, frankly.
Riley Robinson: Matthew Seager has taught in schools in Vermont and Connecticut. He spent a few years tutoring outside Vermont, then came back, and was a substitute teacher in Rutland County Schools for a couple years while he worked on his master’s degree.
Mattew Seager: Once I came back to Vermont, and started teaching at the college and, and substitute teaching a bit around in the public schools, that was really, you know, an eye opener for me.
Matt said the forces pushing him out of education started a few years before the pandemic.
Matthew Seager: I mean, you know, specifically, you know, kind of three buckets, I guess I’d put them into, the first being student behavior, and the second being parental behavior, and the third being the administration. And they all sort of go hand in glove. I mean, but you know, basically the student behavior. Student behavior is tough. I mean, they’re, they’re fearlessly disrespectful of authority.
I had, actually, a particularly disheartening moment. I was filling in for someone who was on maternal leave. So that teacher had already left. They’d already had a sub that was taking over for that teacher, and then that person was out. I was filling in for them. And you’re just hearing f-bombs all over the room, and you ask somebody, Hey, language please. We don’t use that here in school. And the girl turns around and looks at me and says, You’re a sub for a sub. Like, what are you gonna do, basically?
And the answer is nothing. And they know it, and I know it. And frankly, it’s just a terrible situation. For like, 65, 70 bucks a day, I mean, who wants to do that? How many times can you be told to f-off by a 12-year-old, and you want to show up the next day, right?
But you can’t talk about these things without talking about a huge factor in it, which is the politicization of schools. It’s not a two way street, it’s a one-way street, in terms of what side of the aisle they’re coming from. And it’s just pervasive at all levels of education.
Riley Robinson: He said he really disagreed with how issues of race, gender and sexuality were taught and discussed in the public schools he worked in.
Matt Seager: My takeaway was, you know, I knew it was time for me to leave, because there’s just no place in academia for an independent thinker. You know, what I was, you know, raised in, and what I was taught, was, you know, traditional liberalism, where, you know, we it’s a marketplace of ideas, right. You know, that’s just not the case anymore. Like, there’s like, sort of the dominant perspective. And, and that’s really all there is anyone else that wants to come up this way is gonna get crushed. Right? It’s not that your idea stinks, it’s that you stink, and you don’t have a right to speak.
Riley Robinson: He said he started noticing this pressure, and doubting if he should continue in education, right after the 2016 election. He left education for good after he graduated with his MBA, in 2019.
Pandemic burnout and politicization in schools are just a couple of factors driving the education workforce shortage. Administrators have told VTDigger that they’ve also lost staff who can’t find housing. People have fears about school safety.
There are similar workforce needs in lots of sectors, particularly in health care and human services. But one official pointed out to me that where hospitals can fill gaps with traveling nurses, you can’t really hire a whole slate of traveling teachers.
This is Don Tinney, the head of the Vermont-NEA — the teachers’ union.
Don Tinney: From our perspective, we know that wages are a huge factor, particularly in recruiting young people to come into the profession. And, you know, there’s a group of folks in their, you know, late 20s, early 30s, who will get to that decision point, and say, Okay, so if I’m going to make a move, I need to make it now, cause once I’m in, I’ll stay. So they’re the folks who are not retirement age by any stretch, but they’re saying, No, I’m out of here. So how do we make sure that that’s seen as a viable option for them?
Riley Robinson: About 7 percent of teachers around the state are teaching on temporary, provisional licenses, which allow them to work while pursuing their full credentials.
That number has roughly doubled in the past five or six years, according to the Vermont Agency of Education.
But Vermont schools aren’t just short on teachers, there’s a need for all the other staff roles that enable schools to function. Don said this is where a lot of schools are feeling the crunch the most, in support staff roles – like custodians, cafeteria workers, and paraprofessionals, who provide specialized supports for individual students.
Paraprofessionals make a lot less than teachers, averaging at about $22,000 a year, according to the most recent state data.
But there was something else that still didn’t stack up for me – Vermont’s school enrollment numbers have been falling. Across the state, the number of K-12 students has decreased by more than 20% since 2004.
So how are we still short on staff? Don said its because school staffing needs don’t exactly parallel with the number of students.
Don Tinney: You still need to have staff, like a school bus driver, right? Whether you have to get, you know, 60 kids to the school building or whether you have to get 47, you have to run the bus. So you can’t read, you know, and say, oh, okay, well, we’ll use 20%, less of the school bus drivers, right?
Riley Robinson: The state is trying a couple of things to help ease the shortage of teachers. Earlier this year, the state legislature passed a law to help retired teachers reenter the workforce. And a new program, VT-Ed Academy, gave teachers a crash course before the school year began, and it helps them go through a sort of peer-review process to get permanent licenses.
Another expert explained the situation as: We’re losing educators faster than we’re losing students.
This is James Nagle, chair of the education department at St. Michael’s College in Colchester.
James Nagle: I think what you’re seeing is the attrition rate of teachers is faster than the attrition rate of students. And I also think that the class size in Vermont, is relatively small compared to the class size in other states.
Riley Robinson: So basically, to make sure I understand this, you might have fewer kids in a third grade class in a smaller school or in a smaller town, but you still need to have a third grade teacher.
James Nagle: And you may need a peer educator. You may need a special educator.
One thing that I would say Vermont leads the nation in is having inclusive classrooms, bringing everyone into the class, regardless of your intellectual ability, your physical ability, your ability to speak English. That is one of the remarkable things that Vermont still does, that other school districts and other other states don’t necessarily do, and that does require more adults in the room.
You know, and, and that’s one of the things that I think we’re spending more time doing with our generalists and our content specific teachers — such as social studies teachers and science teachers — is building their capacity to work with the special educators, the multilingual teachers, so that they can work as a team to help and surround the students with those challenges.
Riley Robinson: James started his career as a lawyer and worked early on with a juvenile offenders program in Connecticut. That work made him want to be a teacher, so he joined Teach for America, and ended up as a science teacher in Oakland for the next decade. When he went back for a doctorate, he studied how state and federal policies impact teaching practices in middle and high schools.
So we’re talking 90s, early 2000s, was when you started researching and talking to teachers in this formal way. How have you seen the role of teachers change over that period?
James Nagle: I think that in underprivileged and disadvantaged schools, the roles of teachers have not changed very much. I believe that there’s still a need for adults to be in the building, who are caring, loving individuals who understand the most important thing in those schools is developing relationships, and basically, building the identity of these children, so that they understand they’re important, and that they have a place in our society and in our communities.
I think what we saw in the pandemic, the last three years, along with the social awareness that we’re seeing around inequality, in the last few years, I see that that type of understanding about what teaching really is, has now come to almost every school district in the country.
I think many of the wealthy school districts didn’t realize that making relationships is the most important thing that you can do in developing students become productive citizens, productive workers, people who can find a place in society, I think that is really the purpose of schooling, and it always has been. I think, in many cases, and in many places in the country, we’ve lost that.
Riley Robinson: So correct me if I’m wrong, but what I’m hearing is it sounds like that pandemic has really been a reflection point of what matters in education.
James Nagle: I would agree with you with that. I think it’s been a point that has said, Hey, things are broken. And we needed something to put a stress on the structures to see how broken they are. And I think you’re seeing teacher educators, professional development folks, teachers, administrators, taking a step back and saying, OK, how can we create a fabric of community, in our classrooms, in our schools and in the communities that our schools serve?
Riley Robinson: At least for me, someone who doesn’t work in education, it sort of seemed like all of a sudden, alarm bells going off — that we’re short on teachers, we’re short on school bus drivers, we’re short on all of the people we rely on to educate kids. Do you see that as a pandemic thing? Do you see that as a long time coming?
James Nagle: Well, it’s, it’s two things. It is a pandemic thing. It allowed for folks who were thinking of retiring to maybe retire earlier. And especially in Vermont, there is a weighted population of educators that are in their 50s and 60s. They’re going to retire. I think it just allowed them to retire a little bit earlier. And more all at once. And I think that’s why you’re seeing these gaps in the different schools. But it was already there. It was something that is going to happen. Because our education workforce is an older generation.
Riley Robinson: James said he’s noticed a striking decrease in the number of St Mike’s students pursuing education degrees.
James Nagle: Before the pandemic, it was probably 80 to 100. And now, I would say it’s 40 to 60.
Riley Robinson: I feel like now is a good time to talk about Vermont’s future educator pipeline. Are we preparing enough future teachers? What are you seeing there?
I don’t think we are preparing enough future teachers, especially in the fields of special education, multilingual instruction, in the sciences and math. I think what we have been doing, at least what the school districts have been doing, is reaching out to other states and hiring folks from outside of Vermont.
Riley Robinson: He said in response, St. Mike’s has created a program for folks who didn’t study teaching in undergrad, who want to go into the field as a second career.
But James said something else that kind of took me by surprise — he’s now educating undergraduates, future teachers, who themselves finished high school online, and maybe started college mostly online as well.
James Nagle: I have a senior seminar right now. And the students in that seminar, have been doing almost all of their internships and practicum in the schools remotely.
Riley Robinson: Wait, what? Tell me more about that. How do you student teach remotely?
James Nagle: It’s like you teach remotely. But what I’m talking about is the pre-student teaching practicums. This group of seniors that I have right now, are in a course where this is the first time they’re going to be in the school, interning two days a week for six hours or so.
And they have a lot of questions, like, How do I dress?
How do I approach students who are not doing, necessarily, what they should be doing? Those are things they didn’t really have to do in remote learning, because a lot of times, they might have been doing something like you and I are doing, having a conversation over Zoom or Google Hangouts. And it’s a one on one where it’s a very small group and the group are in their bedrooms. Here, they might be in a small group, but in the context of a class of 20 students. How do you handle that interaction? How do you handle the noise? How do you handle putting desks together?
These are all just little moves that an experienced teacher has, because they’ve been teaching in the classroom for so many years. And these are moves that our students don’t have, because they haven’t even been able to practice it over the three years they’ve been at St. Michael’s. So it’s just a unique, you know — it’s like asking someone to go skiing, and they’ve only watched it.
Riley Robinson: There’s something about this that stuck with me. After the past couple of years, with remote learning and the fighting over covid protocols in schools, and curriculum, and all the shouting at local school board meetings — there’s still some students out there who want to do this work. And are going down that road after seeing just how hard it can be.
And that part, to me, seemed deeply hopeful.