It was just a paragraph, and it was buried within a much larger article about career education in area middle and high schools. It was just a short statement, but I stopped and read it and reread it.

Wisconsin has a particularly strong need for teachers.

Salute Captain Obvious on this one. The rationale for the strong need is as follows.

Political turmoil has made it less and less popular, and the retirement rate is currently outpacing the rate of new teachers graduating.

Less and less popular. Political turmoil. Is anyone surprised? We teachers would like to say, “Told you so,” but we’re much too professional and polite to thumb our noses at the state legislature that made this possible.

That’s part of the problem. We are professional. We are willing to stand strong, and we are willing to be advocates for the young people we teach. It’s much harder to stand up for ourselves. Getting smashed to bits by our state leadership when we attempted to speak up – well, let’s just say it didn’t make our chosen field look very attractive.

Meanwhile, fewer young people choose to become teachers in Wisconsin. We, the teachers, are not surprised.