The "Education Is At A Crossroads Which We Must Conquer Or Else" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Checking out my W-2 form from when I began teaching high school at Manheim Township High School in 1972.  Couldn't believe how much a teacher made back then and how my wife and I managed to own a house as well as having her stay at home to raise our first son who had been born the previous year.  I had always wanted to be a teacher and when I had the chance to enter Millersville State Teacher's College I decided now was my chance to be a teacher.  My dream was to be a math teacher since I did well in my math classes at Manheim Township during my time there from 1957-1962.  Well, my tests I took to get into college weren't good enough to be a math teacher, but my interviewer at Millersville asked if I might be interest in being an Industrial Arts teacher.  Always loved working with my hands so I jumped at the chance and entered the Industrial Arts curriculum at Millersville in 1962.  My tuition at the time (1962) was $144.00 a semester plus perhaps $40-$50 for books.  Four years later I was teaching at York Eastern High School for a year to fill in for a teacher on sabbatical.  The following year I was lucky enough to land a position at my former high school, MTHS.  Wasn't long after that I met a beautiful girl and a year later we were husband and wife.  When our first child arrived we decided it would be best if she could stay at home and be a mother rather than work in a cancer laboratory where she had been employed.   The year after our son was born I was making a bit over $11,000 for the year.  I did supplement my job by putting siding on homes with my cousin's husband on weekends and during the summer when I wasn't back in school taking more courses to obtain a higher degree to increase my salary.  But, I loved every minute of it.  Being a teacher was a dream of mine since I played school teaching my younger brother how to do math problems when he was in elementary school and I was in junior high school.  I retired from teaching in 1999, but stayed on as the yearbook advisor in the Middle School and eventually the Intermediate School.  Actually, I still am the advisor for the Intermediate School yearbook.  Also continued to do the in-house printing for the entire school district which is a job I began a few years after I began teaching at the school.  Stationery, envelopes, student and parent handbooks, hall passes, etc. were all printed in my classroom where I taught Graphic Arts and Photography.  I just loved my job and being a teacher.  Now, I tell you all this since I recently read a story written for the local newspaper by Elyse Mundorff, a Garden Spot High Scholastic's student in Lancaster County, PA.  She titled her story "Teaching careers don't appeal to Generation Z."  She goes on to write that when she was little she would often have her relatives sit on the floor and act as her students while she played teacher.  She would write on an easel with fun-colored dry-erase markers and read them picture books.  She always wanted to be just like her elementary school teacher.  She always envisioned herself becoming a teacher when she grew up.  She went on to write that when she entered high school, her days of playing teacher were long over, as were her dreams of actually becoming a teacher.  She considered the risks of becoming a teacher and found it to be less appealing.  What a shame!  She wrote that the number of instructional licenses granted by the Pennsylvania Department of Education has decreased 71% across all subject areas.  So why is this happening.  She listed one reason being the amount of money paid to teachers today.  She says that she will be having to pay off student loans, perhaps having a house with a mortgage, car payments and the cost of raising a family.  I guess I have to agree with her since tuition today is in the thousands of dollars instead of the hundreds when I was a college student.  Add on the cost of needed graduate school to continue to teach and you are even more in debt.   She also tells of the need to be able to teach online with inconsistent schedules.  Teaching online makes it impossible to establish a relationship with your students which is why many people want to be teachers in the first place.  And, all the preliminary testing needed to even get into a school to be a teacher is causing more high school students to think twice about teaching as a career.  Elyse tells how year after year of standardized testing has been a nightmare and she can't imagine being a teacher and having to subject her students to the same thing she had to go through.  Ultimately, teaching is losing its appeal for the current generation of students.  What a shame!  What will become of our educational system if this trend continues in the future.  Where will they find teachers?  The amount of money paid to teachers has grown slightly since I taught, but the additional education required to continue to teach takes away some of the income gained.  I must agree with Elyse when she says..."Why would anyone want to be a teacher?"  Such a shame!  I truly loved my years as a teacher.  Loved them so much that I still enjoy heading back into the schools to take photos for the yearbook so I can interact with the students in a slightly different atmosphere.  I only hope that the story Elyse Mundorff. wrote for the newspaper opens the eyes of their readership and they begin to make a few changes that may help attract new teachers such as Elyse in the near future.  We must succeed or our educational system will not be able to function.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.