This is a screenshot from the multimodal poster I co-created with Anne Heinicke, Mary Verberg, and Victoria Wellman-Teeple, embedded below.
Warren Berger, the author of A More Beautiful Question, articulately states that "there's no shortage in today's world of wicked problems [...]"(Berger, 2014). In his article, "Wicked Thoughts," (2017) Howard Blumenthal states that "a wicked problem is not just a conundrum or a paradox, but a massively frustrating problem, often high on the list of nasties that keep us up all night." We have a wicked problem in education today and it's our teacher shortage, retention, and burnout. Exhaustion, increasing apathy, and loss of passion and interest are just a small number of symptoms resulting from this nation-wide epidemic.
When attempting to tackle this wicked problem, fellow graduate students Ann Heinicke, Victoria Wellman-Teeple, Mary Verberg, and myself, sought out questions that would help us get to the root of this issue. "How many teachers are learving?" "How does this affect the students?" "What can stakeholders do to retain teachers?" We were able to use these questions as jumping-off points for our research into the wicked problem.
After having a general understanding of the issue, we began to start looking into solutions. How can we fix this? Unfortunately, there is no golden answer to this problem. There are, however, some actions we can take toward alleviating these issues of burnout which contributes to the lack of rentention and our teacher shortage. Increasing school funding and teacher wages, ending harmful evaluation processes, and providing consistent mental health support for staff and students are just a few possible solutions. Teacher retention, shortage, and burnout is a wicked problem, and its going to take a wicked change to fix it.
Resources
Berger, W. (2014). A more beautiful question: The power of inquiry to spark breakthrough
ideas. Bloomsbury USA.
Blumenthal, H. (2017, March 14). Wicked thoughts. Digital Insider.
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