Oklahoma: Teacher shortage; 'childhood trauma is impacting the classroom'

Aug 26, 2017, Stillwater News Press: Oklahoma now has more than 1,400 emergency certified teachers http://www.stwnewspress.com/news/oklahoma-now-has-more-than-emergency-certified-teachers/article_7b4742d5-82e5-5bc8-b550-7076dbb28826.html Oklahoma now has more emergency certified teachers than ever before, causing stress and strain on the state's education system which ranks near the bottom in the country for teacher pay and amount spent per student. The Oklahoma board of education approved 574 emergency certificate requests at Thursday’s board meeting, bringing the current total to 1,429 and beating last years record mark of 1,160. Five years ago, only 32 emergency teaching certificates were approved, but the demand has steadily grown since then.... “We are not retaining teacher beyond six years,” Hofmeister said. “We are loosing 46 percent in the first one-to-five years. She also said teachers are facing a very different classroom than they were 30-40 years ago. During a summer training program attended by 7,000 educators, Hofmeister said the biggest request from teachers was to learn how to better teach traumatized children.

“Childhood trauma is impacting the classroom.” …