For those that don’t know, this is teacher appreciation week. Don’t worry. I’m not fishing for compliments or gifts or anything like that. I simply bring this up to point out an obvious point that our beloved governor seems to have missed. He set up a task force.

It seems he doesn’t understand why there is a teacher shortage. We’ve talked in these spaces before about how the task force was set up at first. The first iteration had only two teachers with one housed at their district’s administrative office. Talk about missing the pulse of the people. You don’t have to be an educator or an expert in education to see the problem there.

The other problem is manifest in the week they chose to make teacher appreciation week. They’ve done this before and it never donned on anyone to somehow switch this up. In addition to being teacher appreciation week, it is also the week where we give the Biology, Algebra, and U.S. History state exams. It’s also the same week where most of the AP exams are given.

We appreciate you so much. Why don’t you wear jeans this week. We’ll have some nice breakfast burritos for you in the faculty lounge. Oh, also remember that if you do something wrong while proctoring the STAAR test we will be sure to pull your teacher’s license. Don’t forget your parting gift on the right.

Do we really need to ask why people are leaving the profession or refusing to enter it in the first place? I know some of you can’t get past the paywall but the headline here says it all. For those that don’t want to go down the rabbit hole, it says that a federal audit revealed that HISD under spent by 300 million dollars over a five year period.

Some guestimates conclude that HISD could raise their teacher salaries $10,000 a year across the board without batting an eye. These things usually filter their way down to neighboring school districts. No one wants to be left in the dust when the district next door suddenly boosts pay. However, it would be a big mistake if the task force concludes that we just need more money. Make no mistake, I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth, but the idea of this particular week being teacher appreciation week is kind of a clue.

I had a lull in the middle of my career where I could have gone in other directions. Some here know that well. Ultimately, teaching was my first and best destiny. It just took awhile to find a place where I was comfortable and belonged. We often drop young teachers in the toughest places to teach with the most difficult situations to overcome. We offer very little support and then wonder why so many leave. It shouldn’t take blue ribbon committees and millions of dollars to figure this out. Just about any teacher can tell you this if you stop long enough to listen.

Greg Abbott is not taking this teacher shortage business lying down. He’s a man of action. Like any other man of action, he is commissioning a committee to tell him why there is a teacher shortage. He recently changed the task force when it shockingly held only two teachers.

The 30 person panel included all kinds of central office administrators whose median salary was $170,000. In fact, it was rumored that one of the two teachers actually had their office in the central administration of their district. However, our crackpot team here could not confirm or deny those rumors. If they indeed add enough teachers to make it equal representation then that’s a good start, but it’s still much ado about nothing.

It is fairly easy for classroom teachers to simply say that they need to be paid more. That seems to be the standard response and without consulting teachers it is likely to be the only real answer you will get. That’s a good response. We could all use more money, but you need to be able to dig deeper.

I’ve seen any number of teachers that have left the profession and have come pretty close myself. I think I speak for many of them when I say money really wasn’t a factor in my decision. Teaching is a difficult job. You are more or less on an island and it took me a long time to find my niche. I’ve found it as a support facilitator. There were a lot of bumps and false starts along the way.

So, I would begin with how we train teachers and how we support them. Classroom management is always the most important thing and it is the one thing we are the worst at teaching new teachers. Schools reward experienced teachers with the more sought after assignments. They give younger teachers the more difficult ones. It’s pretty much sink or swim from there.

The job is just too difficult and it is getting much harder. We are adding paperwork demands and making teachers jump through more hoops. As soon as teachers feel like they have their sea legs under them, we change the landscape and force them to start from scratch. Teachers get less support from home and less support from their school’s administration and central office when dealing with difficult student populations.

Asking a central office administrator why teachers are leaving is somewhat comical. Those are people that escaped the classroom. I have no problem with most of them, but it is fairly straightforward. The further removed you are from the classroom the harder it is for them to remember what it was like.

Add to that the recent politicization of teachers and you get a perfect storm. We are expected to make white children feel better about being white. We are expected to avoid anything that might be controversial. We are expected to inform on students that might be transitioning. There are even whispers of doing all of this with cameras installed in our rooms so that administrators and parents can watch in real time.

Abbott doesn’t want to hear about any of this. So, what is he going to hear? He will hear that teachers want more money. He will be able to posture about how greedy we have become. I’ve seen too many teachers leave teaching and none of them left because of the money. They’ve left for all of those other reasons. Those are the reasons he isn’t likely to hear anything about.