Expert Q&A from University of Delaware

According to Philip Gable, professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Delaware, there are emotional and psychological rewards to giving a gift to someone. It extends beyond mere material exchange, says Gable, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Delaware. The happiness derived from giving takes various forms, from a personal investment of time to a budget-conscious monetary contribution. It transcends mere obligation.

In a recent study funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, University of Delaware associate research professor Leigh McLean and her co-authors found a strong connection between teachers’ math and science anxiety and the respective math and science anxiety of their low socioeconomic status (SES) students. When a teacher was more anxious in these content areas, their low-SES students were also more anxious; and, when teachers were less anxious, so were their low-SES students.

The real concern will be the number of mutations on Pirola's spike protein and the recent approval of the boosters that target the current dominant variant, Omicron. We don’t know how effective that booster – which just became available after Sept. 12, 2023 – will be.

Chronic teacher shortages are a systemic problem, which means it’s largely a result of the system in which we educate and support teachers. We know, for example, that many alternative teacher preparation programs — where students come in with a bachelor’s degree outside of the field of education and take only a few courses in preparation for teaching — actually contribute to teacher shortages.

So part of the answer is investing in traditional teacher preparation programs and in financial aid. Our team at CEHD’s Center for Excellence and Equity in Teacher Preparation is working directly with Delaware students from motivation to pursue teaching, through recruitment into UD teacher preparation programs, through graduation from those degree programs and into schools within Delaware, whenever possible. 

For example, our Teachers of Tomorrow program introduces underrepresented high schoolers to the field of education through an immersive, two-week summer institute at UD where they can learn about our programs, meet current students and talk with educators. In partnership with high-needs Delaware school districts and the Delaware Department of Education, our Teacher Residency program allows early childhood education, elementary teacher education and secondary STEM education students to pursue yearlong, paid teaching placements in Delaware schools. Overall, we find that 80% of the students we recruit from Delaware stay in our schools to teach.

The overarching concern for many K-12 teachers and administrators is creating a sense of continuity as children and young adults go back to school. The three big concerns that contribute to this issue are teacher turnover, school leader turnover and the number of long-term substitutes who are not fully prepared to teach in classrooms. These trends were already in place before the pandemic, but the pandemic heightened this crisis.