Keeping Teachers From Dropping Class : Program Aims to Ease Stress on New Instructors in Hopes They Will Stay on the Job

When talk turns to salaries paid to movie stars, baseball players and television anchors, the comparison is usually to teachers’ pay. The relative benefit to society of teaching versus professional sports is often a corollary for discussion. The notion of the underpaid teacher has become a truism, and yet it deserves repeating, especially with the advent of a new school year.

In Orange County, the average pay for beginning teachers is $26,821 a year, ranging from a high of $29,463 in the Los Alamitos Unified School District to $20,488 in Saddleback Valley Unified. Averaged over 52 weeks, that works out to $394 per week. A spokeswoman said that the district’s benefits are good, and of course the salary increases with seniority, but the fact remains that no one ever went into teaching to get rich.

Unfortunately, those who went into teaching to help the young, and who improve our society by doing it, increasingly run the risk of burnout for a variety of reasons ranging from heavy class loads to low budgets, not just for pay but for class supplies. Officials of California’s teacher retirement system said at least 20% of the new teachers in the state quit within the first two years. Another study said that 37% of teachers leave after five years.

To try to persuade teachers to stay, the state Department of Education and the Commission on Teacher Credentialing have developed a project to support new instructors. That worthwhile program has now begun in Orange County, in conjunction with teacher-education programs at Cal State Fullerton and UC Irvine.

About 150 teachers in the county will be paired with experienced teachers in their schools, learning strategies for coping with the pressures of the classroom from their mentors. The newcomers also will be able temporarily to avoid formal job evaluations, which add stress for rookies who have not learned how to pace themselves and who do not have lesson plans from a year or two ago to fall back on. The program will be a success if it can duplicate the remarkable increase in retention rates it has shown elsewhere in the state.

Teachers are unlikely ever to be paid enough to match the importance of their jobs. Luckily there are still enough dedicated men and women to staff the classrooms, spend their own money on supplies and decorations, and mark papers at night at home, as well as teach and help to socialize our children. The state is wise to try to retain experienced teachers, and reinforce the enthusiasm that led them into the profession.