LIVE: Addressing the Crises Facing Public School Teachers

As a teacher, I do support higher teacher pay and support. However, not all teachers leave the profession due to low pay. Many are leaving due to the unbelievable workloads, lack of student discipline, and lack of support on a daily basis from administrators. There needs to be a solution that addresses all of these issues.

Even if you don’t agree with Bernie, he is such a patriot. He is the only one who tries to speak about the actual concerns of the American people.

As a teacher in The Netherlands, I am so shocked that teachers in the US have to pay for the educational materials in their class. That is very strange to me.

There is no incentive to teach. The pay is crap, the parents are difficult to deal with, the students are out of control and there is no support from the administrators.

Students are not held responsible for their actions. Students cuss out teachers and return to class from speaking with administrators with a snack. Administrators will blame you for student behaviors and teachers are constantly gaslighted until you don’t care or quit.

Most teachers I know quit because of student behavior. The schools can’t be fixed unless we address the fact that, right now, kids often have more authority and power in the classroom than teachers - and they know it.

Have the senators take over the classroom for a week. Then they will understand.

Thank you Senator Bernie Sanders for speaking on behalf of teachers. We need better pay for teachers. We are definitely overworked, underpaid and most definitely not appreciated. And still we try really hard to help our students be the BeST they can be. Students most definitely should be held accountable for their actions, and parents also need to be better involved in their child's educational and social life. I am a retired teacher, and I still love to teach, so I do work as a "substitute". I would like parents to volunteer in their child's school and see what really goes on. Especially in a public high school. They would be appalled. Nothing will change until everyone is involved in their child's education and actually be IN THE SCHOOL, especially the lawmakers. They make the "rules" and have never taught. Be blessed.

I work in the public school system. There is a problem with student violence, and lack of parent support. They side with their child. 😢 It needs to change for our children.

WRONG, Senator Sanders - the #1 reason teachers are leaving is due to STUDENT BEHAVIOR and the lack of support in doing anything about this!

This is why I have been teaching abroad for the last 10 years and will continue to do so; excellent healthcare, school pays my rent and utilities, 2 flights home each year, 60 paid days off, affordable city life.

Teachers should make no less than 100,000 per year. Their value should be reflected in their pay. It would also make the field more competitive, drawing in high quality educators.

Bernie would have obliterated Trump on that debate stage last night.

Mr. Pondiscio’s statement, “Universities are more concerned with professional disposition and theory rather than preparing teachers for the classroom,” summed up my thoughts exactly during my first years of teaching. I thought to myself, not one paper I wrote, prepared me for this class. I speak the truth, had it not been for this one college professor that actually brought hands on curriculum into the classroom I would not have learned how to work with certain assessments. In addition, I leaned on my skills, growing up as an inner city child, how to support my inner city students when it pertained to their social and emotional development. I wish colleges would focus more on what is going on in the classroom and preparing teachers for that rather than theory. I appreciate history however I would rather focus on what needs to be done in the classroom because teachers have now become counselors, social workers, and in many cases parents to our students. I really appreciate someone pointing that out.

Get ‘em Bernie

I'm sorry, but all the Board Certified teachers in the world won't stop a kid from bringing a gun to school or from kicking a security guard after a mob has beat that guard to the ground or from beating a teacher until she suffers a detached retina in her eye - all things I have seen in the school where I teach. We have disruptive students who have over 50 office referrals within the first half of the school year, yet still receive the same 1-day in-school suspension consequence and are returned into the classroom to keep disrupting the next day. This is a toxic environment that makes it impossible to teach or learn within. THIS is why teachers are leaving the profession.

I just finished my first year of teaching in the US and I'm done. Compared to where I taught previously (China, South Korea), teaching in the US is a nightmare. Teaching here has nothing to do with education or academics, but managing student behavior.. Still, the parents were the worst of it. I had a parent screaming in my face in the first month, because I informed them that day we did not have a conference scheduled and they would need to schedule it with me. That same parent even followed me to my car after I'd come back from a sick break, because the class had missed 1 assembly. Nothing like that ever happened when I taught abroad. Abroad, teachers are respected. I even had FREE HOUSING in China and South Korea. In the US, I can't even afford rent. In South Korea, I had a pension from my first day. In Hawai'i, my school gave me a paper my first day saying they pay 0% into my 401k for the first 10 years I work for them. The way teachers are treated in the US, by the DOE, staff, parents, and students is an embarrassment.

It is true that many of our students come from dysfunctional and traumatic home lives, but it does not mean that we should allow these students to traumatize students & staff and to cause dysfunction in classrooms - which IS currently happening in the districts that have the most teacher turnover. WE ARE NO LONGER ALLOWED TO DISCIPLINE STUDENTS - that is the issue! Schools are UNSAFE because of this. I have been a teacher for 23 years in Title 1 schools. I saw a stark decline around 2010, halfway through my experience. Our students are not lacking resources - our students are lacking an orderly and safe environment and teachers' hands are tied in providing this.

Yup. I am burned out. Retiring early. Student behavior and excessive work load have damaged my mental and physical health. Turning it over to the younger generation.

Thank you, Teachers and Paraprofesionals! Unions are not the problem. Parents who want to be involved will be. Shame on those playing politics with these professionals and decent wages.