This past week I attended open houses for my kids in middle school (grades 7 and 8) and high school (grade 10). At the high school, with the exception of the driver’s ed teacher and the band director, I don’t think a single one of my kid’s teachers was older than 30. In fact, I know many were younger than that, because most said when they graduated from college, how long they have been teaching, etc.
I know your perspective changes with age. But when I was in high school, I remember the majority of teachers appearing to be at least in their 40s or so, with some ancient grayhairs in their 50s or 60s. I certainly think I would have remembered if the majority of my teachers were in their mid-20s. I think my recollections of high school are more accurate than, say, elementary school, where anyone over 21 seemed ancient when I was a little kid.
Note that I am not suggesting these teachers were unqualified. To the contrary, my wife and I were extremely impressed with the competence and energy across the board.
I also note that the average age of middle school teachers seemed considerably older than high school. In fact, I don’t think my 7th grader had more than 1 teacher under 30, maybe a couple in their 30s, and the remainder in their 40s to pushing 60.
I was just wondering if specific things had occurred that lowered the average age of teachers - at least at the high school level. Were there mass recent retirements of an aged workforce? Is there tremendous turnover? Other factors?
Well I know where I live that a lot of teachers have retired in a large wave and for a while there was a shortage as few people were going into the profession…
I spoke with quite a few of the teachers I had in high school when I went back to do some tutoring a few years ago and they all planned to retire the day they were eligible as they were burned out and dissatisfied with the environment they had to teach in. (Huge classes of disrespectful kids and no supplies and no support from the administration)
While the sentiment is mostly accurate (when my son started Kindergarten I discovered that his teacher, who had already been teaching a year or two, had been born the year I graduated college).
However, that is not, actually, the observation that Dinsdale made and, while I would chalk it up to coincidence, I can make the same observation he did. When my daughter was in Middle School, her teachers were usually close to my age while now that she is in High School, I keep encountering very young teachers. I think that only one of her h.s. teachers has been over 30 and none were in their 40s. (On the other hand, I know that there are older teachers in my daughter’s school–she just does not have any of them for her classes.)
Do your kids go to private school, Dinsdale? Times are changing since my teaching days, but it used to be that you could walk into a private school classroom straight out of your Bachelor’s cap and gown, without having to muddle with those pesky certification programs (that often take quite a bit of extra time).
THen again, some of it might be your perspective. I mean, when I was in first grade, my teacher seemed like a Fully Fledged Adult ™, and now when I look back at my 1st grade class picture, and see her there in her blue eyeshadow, white lipstick, and mini-skirt, she looks 18 to me.
Tom - we noticed the same thing last year. A couple of my daughter’s freshman teachers in particular seemed extremely young and “perky.” It just jumps out at me when I meet a teacher and my initial impression is that she seems to be a quite-recent product of a sorority.
So this year my wife and I somewhat kept our eyes out - looking into rooms we passed, etc. Certainly no adequate sampling, but our impression was that there were few - um - middle aged teachers, and next to no old ones.
Heck, the principal introduced her most senior dean, and the guy appeared WAY younger than my 42 years.
Believe me, when I was a teenager I was most certainly on the lookout for anything approaching a “hot chick.” And to this date, I can pretty much list the 2 or 3 HS teachers that qualified. Most were girls’ gym teachers. (I’m guessing it is because my high school, Lane Tech in Chicago, had only recently changed to coed from all guys. So girl’s gym would be a department where there were not a group of established senior teachers.)
Man, if I were a teen today, I’d have an even harder time than I did concentrating on my schoolwork.
Depends where you look. In the high school where I teach, the average age of the faculty is well over 40. Districts w/ a high turn-over rate in their faculty tend to have young teachers. I taught in a Texas district in the 80’s for example that had a 44% turnover in faculty every year. Average age in that district was probably in the low 20’s. After only three years, I was one of the senior people in the building.
It depends on a lot of things. Whether there’s been a recent wave of retirement, for starters. Most of the teachers I had in school were about my mother’s age, which makes sense. The year she started, they had just enacted a mandatory retirement age for teachers, which forced out nearly half the teachers in the district. These were replaced with Mom and various other new grads. When she and her contemporaries start retiring en masse, new grads will be coming in in waves, rather one here or there like it is now.
A lot of districts, due to budget cuts, are doing whatever they can to get rid of the older teachers, so they can hire young ones at lower salaries. Other places are such hell-holes that the staff transfers out as soon as possible, leaving those jobs for new grads who can’t find anything better.
I must say this thread has the potential to go down hill rather quickly. I think Dinsdale, you see teachers as being so much younger because there has been a wave of retirees from the field. And not just in the midwest. I’m in the North east and the same trend is happening here…Its all those kids born in the late 70s who are now 25,26,27, etc…etc… and they look extremely young. And think about this: We may be witnessing a generational change happening right before our eyes. Teachers are aging at the same rate as everyone else, and as teaching is a solid career that people tend to stay in for life, there are most certainly going to be years that the teachers all tend to be on the young side.
On the collegiate level where I teach the norm is staying relatively constant. The teachers are all mostly in their thirties and beyond, especially at institutions where having a PhD is a requirement. Though this is not true in everycase there are exceptions. I happen to be one of them. I was finishing my PhD at Arizona State University when I received a call from my Alma Mater back here in New England. A position was opening up and I was one of the people called for an interview. I had my rolling resume with them until my PhD was finished. Upon completion I was pleasently surprised to have gotten the job. So at 27 I was the youngest faculty member in my department. Now at 34 I feel like I am finally wiping the agism away…
Well all through elementary, junior high and senior high I think my youngest teacher was probably 35.
One of my best friend and his wife are teachers. When I visit them I hang out with outher teachers. They are all under 30, and started teaching as young as 26.
So I have to say teachers in my neck of the woods seem to be younger.
I’m one of those kids born in the late 70’s who is a young looking teacher now. When I first started, at the age of 22, I was mistaken for a student my first time through the lunch line! The lunch lady wasn’t going to let me get what I wanted.
We are surfing the retirement wave right now where I teach. I was pretty much the first young teacher hired (5 years ago), and since then we have added about 6-7 more in our middle school. We only have about 30 teachers, so the percentage is definitely growing quickly. We will have more than 50% of our staff retire within the next 4 years, so I will be an old man on the staff by then.
It’s like everything else in life, it goes in cycles.
Except, of course, in the classes taught by grad students…
(I’m 24 and have just started teaching freshman comp, which in my department – like most English departments, I imagine – is generally the duty of grad students…)
Apparently, it is. The school districts my parents taught in (Mass.) both started giving out incentives for older teachers to retire early, usually in the form of adding years to their senority for the purpose of calculating their pension (giving someone with 30 years experience the pension of a 35-year teacher, for example). They’d both been teaching since the mid-60’s, and their salaries at that point were about double what a starting teacher would recieve.
Yes, the same thing happens at my university. Unless you have class at a small department, or are already in the concentration courses, many of the classes are taught (or at least tutored ) by grad students.
My instructor for organic chem. lab was just 22, I’m sure the other lab instructors and TAs I had for chemistry were in that range (22-27). Interestingly, the TAs I had for physics were probably older, in their 30s, 40s, and 50s.
My French teacher (relatively large program) was a grad student, 30 years old. But there are only two teachers in the Portuguese program (my minor), and no grad students teaching classes.
In my Animal Science department, every concentration course (animal science) is taught by PhD.s or M.S., not by grad students
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Yep. Not only that, but younger teachers can probably be more in tune with what the university/superintendent/school board wants than an older teacher, at least in terms of research or curriculum.
I was mistaken for a student about 2 weeks ago by another teacher that I have been working with at least 3 years.
Not bad for a 30 year old with 7 years teaching experience…
But seriously, teachers are younger now because of burnout and offers of early retirement. However, that might not be the case too much longer in Florida because of the class size amendment.
The state is offering incentives to older teachers to stay in the classroom just a bit longer because otherwise some schools would be nothing but a group of first year teachers, and that’s not good. You need the veterans to teach the newbies.
