Teacher shortage puts grad students in front of the class

Caitlin Lentlie paced deliberately in front of desks arranged in a large U, a chart of the solar system projected on the wall behind her. As she did, she walked a class of about 15 students through a comparison of the very big and the very small: comparing and contrasting the solar system with the Bohr model of the atom — a nucleus surrounded by orbiting electrons.

“What is our sun like?” Lentlie asked the students. “Our sun is like the … ”

“The nucleus,” someone answered.

“The nucleus, right,” Lentlie said. “And our planets are like the … ?” Lentlie’s question hung in the air before drawing out an answer from the class.

“The electrons,” a whisper emerged from a student.

Lentlie carried her classroom with the grace and confidence of an experienced teacher. But she’s just another student in a reading strategies class Tuesday night at the Clarkson University Capital Region Campus — formerly Union Graduate College.

After Lentlie’s 20-minute practice lesson, Professor Patti Rand had the class of education graduate students share what worked and what could be improved in Lentlie’s.

The improvement’s going to have to come on the job: Lentlie is already teaching real classes, of real students.

The next morning, Lentlie was in front if a Regents Chemistry class at Niskayuna High School, where as part of a yearlong internship she teachers a pair of classes.

One of her two mentors at the school, chemistry teacher Meagan Hughes, sat at a lab table in the back of the class and watched as Lentlie led the class of mostly juniors through the answers to a quiz on compounds.

“Most new teachers think that if I know my content and can explain it, I’ll be fine,” said Hughes, who said she was impressed by Lentlie’s ability to engage and connect with her students. “But there are so many other things going on in our classes these days — that’s challenging if you aren’t ready for it.”

While internships have long been a part of the teacher education program at Union Graduate College, last fall districts were so in need of teachers for certain positions that some of the graduate students received paid internships, teaching their own classes for the first time, said Catherine Snyder, now chair of Clarkson’s education department and head of the former Union Graduate teacher education master’s program.

At Shenendehowa High School, graduate student Alicia Palmer, who graduated from Union College in June, teaches Chinese I and II classes — the only Chinese teacher at the school, she said.

Snyder said she heard from a surprising number of school districts in the fall desperate for qualified teachers — a marked shift after years of layoffs and a painfully tight hiring market for new teachers across the region.

“So now all of a sudden, we have serious shortages,” Snyder said. “This cohort will be much more fortunate than students graduating three to five years ago.”

At the former Union Graduate program, Snyder said, job placement rates for graduates were 90 percent in 2014 and 95 percent last year — after dropping to a low of 65 percent in 2010. Before the downturn, placement rates had long been in the 90 percent range.

The shortage across New York state has several factors, according to deans of education schools in the Capital Region, who agree it could continue to worsen over the next three to five years.

Snyder spelled out some of the reasons: Districts tightened new hiring amid waves of layoffs and cutbacks during the economic downturn, and heated political rhetoric over education standards and teacher evaluations signaled to prospective teachers that the field was unstable. Fewer people returned to teaching after being laid off when school budgets faced millions of dollars in shortfalls, and some teachers decided to retire altogether.

Snyder said she expects another wave of retirements to hit soon as baby boomers who have held on for the past few years make for the exits. And a push to add more AP and other specialty classes has further thinned teacher staffs, Snyder said.

University of Albany School of Education Dean Robert Bangert-Downs and College of Saint Rose Education Dean Margaret McClane also cited the controversies over standards, testing and evaluations as turnoffs to potential teachers.

They argued that the emphasis on using student test results as a measure of teacher performance didn’t account for outside factors or different student populations and has created unproductive anxiety in schools. (The deans agreed that recent policy changes and tonal shifts among elected officials and state education leaders are positive signs.)

Bangert-Downs recently gave a talk to a group of the school’s master teacher candidates, encouraging them to “fan the flame” of teaching in the students who showed signs of interest and promise as future educators. But a handful of the teachers, he said, told him after the speech they couldn’t “in good conscience” encourage students to enter the profession.

“We have to think five, 10, 20 years out,” he said. “The need is going to be there, the rewards are still there; we need to stop bashing teachers.”

But as district budgets start to open up and old programs are restored or expanded, many are finding that the new teachers aren’t there. Education schools across the state have seen significant enrollment declines over the past decade, slowing the flow of teachers at the start of the “pipeline.”

At UAlbany, for example, Bangert-Downs estimated the school’s current enrollment at about 800, down from around 1,100 students in 2008. And almost all of that decline came in the school’s teacher preparation program, while enrollment in its other programs, like counseling, stayed consistent.

The shortage of teachers is most acute in special education, world languages and the STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and math. Special education jobs can be especially stressful and many of those teachers look to move into general education positions after a few years, McClane said. And undergraduate students with STEM specialties can make much more money in private-sector positions.

But students able to look past all of the negativity surrounding the profession are the ones most likely to succeed, the deans said.

“We are finding the people who are coming to us are the most motivated,” Bangert-Downs said. “I don’t think the quality has diminished, but the numbers are smaller.”

The Clarkson education graduate students have internships across the region — in public and private schools, working with experienced teachers.

Some of the graduate students have no background in teaching but a drive to share their knowledge with others — like Lentlie and Palmer.

“It forces me to break down my own learning process and translate that so it works for my students, and not every student learns the same,” Palmer said of teaching.

Other graduate students are former lawyers or engineers, career changers like Moria Quackenbush, who previously worked for the federal government.

For her internship, Quackenbush teaches biology at Albany High School, and her class is made up of refugees and immigrants from countries across the globe, studying in a new language. She said the students are incredibly attentive and clearly value the chance to learn.

“I always want to know what their stories are,” she said of her students. “They value education more because of where they come from.”

After Lentlie presented her Bohr model-solar system comparison lesson Tuesday night, the graduate students paired off to share examples of alternative texts they could use in classes.

Jared Foro and Kelly Majuri, who has taught since 1991 and is working on her master’s degree, agreed that children’s books are handy in math and science classes — even for high school students.

“I sit on top of a table, and they will sit on the ground in front of me,” Majuri said. “Who doesn’t love to be read to?”

“And these books are so engaging,” Foro said.

When it came time to share his texts with the class, Foro offered a book of poems about a flood that he used for a lesson on river systems and erosion.

“We are going to sit down and have story time with this,” he said. “And they are going to love it.”

Reach Gazette reporter Zachary Matson at 395-3120, [email protected] or @zacharydmatson on Twitter.

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