Think before you act

Aesop has a fable that tells the story of two frogs that lived in the same pool of water. During the hot summer, the pool dried up. The frogs, who need water to thrive, set out to find another place to live.

They passed a deep well full of water. One frog said to the other that they should make this well their new home. The other frog, erring on the side of caution, questioned his friend about what they would do if the deep water failed them, and they couldn’t get out of the cavernous well. The moral: Do nothing without a regard to the consequences — or as my parents taught me as a child, “Think before you act.”

There’s a lot of discussion going on about a teacher shortage in Arkansas. It’s been reported that the shortage is occurring across the nation. It seems the solution being discussed quite often is lowering teaching requirements. Lowering requirements for any job is nothing more than a short cut to lessening the respect for the professionals doing the job. Lowering requirements is equivalent to lessening quality and it’s only the answer to a shortage when people in charge do not want to work to find a solid solution. It’s an insult to teachers who take pride in their job and education. In fact, lowering teaching requirements sends a clear message that teaching doesn’t require knowledge or skill and adds to idea that teaching is nothing more than child-minding. Reducing teaching requirements will not just affect learning and educators; more importantly, it will affect generations of people who will eventually run the world. Do we really want to make becoming a teacher so easy that anyone thinks they can do it in order to have warm bodies governing in the classroom? Being an educator is a gift. There’s a skill involved. Not everyone can change the life of a learner from a disadvantaged home with a learning disability and watch the metamorphosis from non-learner to lifelong learner. Believe me when I say not everyone is cut out for it and that’s Ok. Not everyone is cut out to be a mechanic, a plumber or a dancer either.

As far as teacher salaries are concerned, just as in jobs in the corporate world, there’s a huge disparity between the salaries of people in administration or the head office and the people doing the grunt work. It’s no wonder that educators often continue to further their education in order to earn those higher salaries with a 50 percent increase. Some take on extra assignments to pad their paychecks. There can only be so many chiefs and that leaves a lot of educators in the classroom dealing with the daily stresses of class sizes, parents, curriculum, testing and behavior issues at a salary that gets smaller with each recession. Why is it that the public service jobs, which are some of the most important jobs in our society, do not pay well? Why does our society value professional athletes and reward them with astronomical salaries more than policemen, firemen and teachers? What could be more important than educating our youth, protecting people from criminals and law breakers, and saving homes and lives from fire? These are just a few of the positions that are vital to communities, but often do not pay well.

Just because someone has a calling, doesn’t mean they do not want to eat, buy clothing for their kids, or purchase a vehicle or home, but sadly their salaries can make it difficult. Is it any wonder that people considering the teaching field are saying, “No, thank you.”?

For every action there is a consequence and lowering teaching standards to lure people to the classroom will have consequences in the future. These consequences will begin to rear their ugly heads around the senior year of high school when college or careers are being decided and students will have to think their way out of a paper bag and they won’t have the strategic reasoning skills to do it. It’s then that you can thank a teacher shortage.

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Pam Lowe is the editor of the Clay County Courier in Corning. Her email address is pamlowe@claycountycourier. com