Education Week recently hosted a live event with Texas Public Radio focused on how school districts can support teachers, who are under pressure from sides.
The event was tied to Education Week’s recently released State of Teaching project, an annual reporting series and nationwide survey exploring educator morale and working conditions.
At the April 14 event, held in San Antonio, leaders of school systems and individual schools, as well as classroom educators talked about the biggest challenges that undermine teacher morale in Texas, and nationwide. And the participants put forward potential solutions.
Among the ideas that were surfaced: Support for teachers has to begin with teacher-preparation programs. And school districts need to think to think creatively about offering pathways so that teachers can see options for challenging themselves professionally — in the classroom or central office.
Joaquin Hernandez, the principal of MacArthur High School in the North East Independent School District in San Antonio, said during the event that his system has worked with local teacher-prep programs to help teachers working on provisional licenses gain full certification. His school has also put an emphasis on building their skills through professional development.
“We’re finding that the biggest thing that we have to do
to make our folks successful is create student teaching pathways before they get into the classroom,” he said, “and then create onboarding pathways before they take over the classroom.”
Readers can download the a whitepaper breaking down the full discussion below.
