Amid the flight of Jamaican teachers to the United States in search of better opportunities, some of their American counterparts are cautioning them to temper their expectations as educators in that country have been fleeing classrooms for a variety of reasons.

“People always think the grass is greener on the other side,” Sharla Anderson, a pre-school teacher at Nativity Child and Family Centre in Minnesota, told the Jamaica Observer.

Anderson said that, while she isn’t surprised by the teacher resignations in Jamaica, she is saddened.

“What I gather is that the conditions, resources, benefits are worse in Jamaica. While the United States definitely has its flaws within the education system, clearly it is not any worse than what they have in Jamaica. I’m guessing that the trade-off of teaching in the United States offers more opportunity as a whole, and that Jamaican educators are willing to look past the problems they will experience while teaching in the United States,” she said.

Anderson was responding to a Sunday Observer query about conditions in the US education system following the Jamaica Teachers’ Association’s (JTA) caution that the local education system is operating on a punctured life raft as more than 400 of the island’s much-needed teachers have resigned this year thus far — 167 in the last two months alone. The majority of those teachers, the JTA said, have been recruited by US schools.

It emerged in recent weeks that some US schools, hit by teacher resignations, have slashed instruction hours to just four days in an attempt to ease the pressure being faced by the remaining teachers.

Three weeks ago Dan Domenech, executive director of the School Superintendents Association in the US, said he has never seen the teacher shortage “this bad”.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, the number of teachers graduating in the US dropped from 275,000 in 2010 to 200,000 in 2021.

Anderson was among a group of teachers from the United States, Barbados, Belize, and Ghana contacted by the Sunday Observer last week to speak on the current developments.

Pointing out that she was at work for 12 hours last Wednesday, in just the opening weeks of the current school year, Anderson said there were some conditions in the US education system that need to be addressed.

She pointed to three teachers in her school district who resigned and made complete career changes last year, and recommended measures to stem the loss of educators.

“Increased pay with appropriate cost of living, [pay] increases revised yearly, smaller class sizes or, if it’s not possible, more teaching assistants or paraeducators permanently placed in classrooms to help with the influx of students struggling academically and emotionally,” Anderson suggested.

She also pitched the idea of additional prep time during the school day to prepare for weekly lessons and separate prep time to complete administrative work required by the school district.

Additionally, Anderson said there is a need for “more flexibility with curriculum requirements, with less pressure and focus on standardised test scores; increased funding for early childhood education, which currently, depending on the state, is very limited; adequate funding for supplies and technology so that it is equitable and attainable by all schools and not just a select few; and direct involvement in policy and procedure making”.

Teachers in the US, she insisted, “want to be heard, and decisions need to be made with direct teacher input”.

A special education teacher at John Adams High School in New York City, who wanted to be identified only as “Miss K”, echoed similar sentiments.

“The grass isn’t always greener on the other side,” she said before adding, “I am not surprised that Jamaican teachers are heading to the US. To me, it sounds like teachers in Jamaica need more support in the classrooms. Maybe this means having paraprofessionals or a teaching assistant that can help support students with greater needs. I also envision that there are too many students in one class and that the class sizes should be made smaller.”

Miss K, who teaches grades nine to 12, said she wishes several areas of concern among teachers in the US will be rectified.

“Conditions vary from district to district, even in the same state. There needs to be higher pay, required funding for supplies, and required curriculum with lesson plans to be supplied to teachers throughout the country.”

Winston Smith, who last week ended his tenure as JTA president, had outlined that, locally, a teacher with a first degree would receive a net pay of $133,788.88 after the Government’s recently proposed four per cent wage increase. In contrast, in the United States, a teacher would earn between US$4,000 and US$6,000 per month.

Last week, at the JTA annual general meeting, Minister of Education Fayval Williams said that, while the number of Jamaican teachers migrating may be alarming, the situation is under control, noting that 964 specialist teachers who have just completed their studies are now available for employment.

Jonnea Kirlew was one of those teachers who left Jamaica in September 2021 to teach in Georgia, USA. She said that, like many other young teachers, she had decided to resign without knowing what would happen to her next.

“I felt overworked and overwhelmed, especially with the increased cost of living, while our salaries remained the same,” she told the Sunday Observer.

“The education system here [in the USA] has treated me quite well. I feel valued as a teacher. We have sufficient resources provided to us, like projectors, smart boards, computers, et cetera,” she said, pointing out that during her teaching days in Jamaica she “had to schedule days or weeks in advance for a projector, while being told that we should include technology in the classroom”.

She said that now, in the US, she simply requests instructional materials from the school instead of purchasing from her pocket.

“The salary is better, of course, due to the difference in currency, so I’m better able to care for my family, who still resides in Jamaica. Overall, I’d say that my experience here has been good. I haven’t had a bad day in a year,” Kirlew said.

But Matt Giovanniello, CEO of Frenalytics, a US company that develops learning software for teachers and students, told the Sunday Observer that teacher burnout in the US is a growing problem.

“We actually just published an article with some research on the prevalence of burnout in the US, UK, and Germany. What we discovered was that, while burnout leading to teachers resigning was prevalent before the [novel coronavirus] pandemic, COVID magnified many of the underlying reasons — lack of training, challenging parents, lack of funding, high emotional demands from staff and families, and needing to function as a counsellor to students, to name a few,” he said.

“It makes me wonder whether similar reasons in Jamaica are causing teachers to leave the country entirely to teach here, despite the circumstances being arguably similar.”

He said he does not know enough about the working conditions of teachers in Jamaica to make an analogous comparison. However, he reasoned, “Perhaps, with all the problems our education system is facing here it’s still better than what Jamaican teachers are facing. I don’t know for sure, though.”

Frenalytics makes software that helps alleviate teacher burnout by automating a lot of manual, time-consuming tasks, especially for teachers of special needs students.

“Here in the States, we call it progress monitoring, and it can add hours of administrative burden per week to a teacher’s already overloaded schedule. Within our platform we handle many of those tasks for the teacher. It is something to think about if you hear similar problems being cited by teachers [in Jamaica],” said Giovanniello,

A first grade information and communications technology teacher, who gave her name only as Michelle, and who has been working in the US for almost three decades, said teaching in that country has not been easy.

“This is my 29th year as a teacher. Many things have changed over the years. The biggest strain on education and the entire world was COVID, [with] increased heath regulation to follow. Social, emotional learning has always been a part of education, but now more than ever,” she said.

“Teaching five-year-olds remotely was not an easy task. Teachers give up a lot of their personal time. Teachers don’t just show up unprepared. This takes many hours per week. Teachers need to find a balance between preparing for their classes and their families,” she shared, then added, “That all being said, I love my job more than anything. I could never see myself doing anything different.”

The problem exists as far as Ghana, according to Ribeiro Benjamin, a teacher at Konsia R/C Primary School.

“Jamaica may be operating a similar system as that of ours, where the needs and outcry of teachers are not the concern of the Government or leaders of the country. Compared to other government workers, the salaries teachers take home are meagre — nothing to write home about,” said Benjamin.

“Also, textbooks are still yet to be released to execute the curriculum implemented years ago,” he said, adding, “The abolishing of end-of- term examination is having dire consequences on the kids as most of them no longer take their studies seriously because, no matter what, they’d be promoted.”

Benjamin said that many people in his country get into teaching, but due to poor remuneration and working conditions they maintain that if they get a better job they stop teaching.

“Teaching is no longer an attractive profession for the upcoming youth, and those who are already in the profession are finding ways out in order to better their lives,” he said.

Benjamin told the Sunday Observer that there are loopholes in Ghana’s education system.

“In order for us to execute our work to our maximum capacity, these conditions need to be looked at. Teachers deserve a large pay raise to cope with the high living conditions in the country. I know of a headmaster in a neighbouring school who left the classroom last year to travel outside the country in search of greener pastures. Similar, or even worse, is happening in my country and many developing countries. Teachers aren’t given the benefits they deserve,” he argued.

In the Caribbean, Mary Redman, president of the Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union, told the Sunday Observer that, while there isn’t a mass resignation of teachers in that country, there have been repeated public outcry from various unions for education reform.

“We don’t have a problem with teachers leaving in any great numbers. From time to time we do have teachers who leave and go to places like The Bahamas, Bermuda, and Cayman, but that is never in large numbers. There is no such problem at this point in time,” she said.

“However, there are always calls — the unions are always seeking to secure improved terms and conditions of service, including better resources, healthier and safer work environments, and increased salary because, despite the normal increases in the cost of living over time, because of COVID and what is happening in Europe in terms of that Russia-Ukraine war, that has resulted in an increase in our cost of living,” Redman said.

Belizean Spanish teacher, Juan de Dios Moguel, told the Sunday Observer he left Belize in 2020 and is currently teaching at Warren County School in North Carolina.

“In Belize, due to the 10 per cent salary reduction implemented last year, it was not enough to meet the monthly expense for house mortgage and a decent living. Inflation is high in Belize. There is the availability to further my education here in the USA while teaching. The universities are very flexible with foreign teachers, allowing us to enrol in a master’s programme at a very affordable cost. I am currently pursing a master’s degree in bilingual education,” he related.

“My situation is far better than being at home. My salary is triple what I used to get. I get to pay my bills at home, my bills here, and [I am] still left with some extra money monthly. The programme here appreciates teachers by providing incentives such as bonus, credited professional development courses, and support to teachers with resources,” said the Spanish teacher.