Maine Public – Robbie Feinberg
“However, retaining teachers is easier said than done. Nationally, 8 percent of all classroom teachers leave the profession every year, according to a recent report from the Learning Policy Institute. The reasons range from low pay to insufficient prep time. Marty Abbott, the executive director of the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages, says those same issues affect foreign language teachers, who can often use their skills to find other, better-paying jobs. “Naturally, people are going into a wide variety of fields where we do need their language capabilities,” he says. “But we also need their language expertise to become teachers as well.” If you ask foreign language teachers in Maine, they’ll tell you that their biggest challenge is workload. At the elementary and middle levels, many work in four or five schools at a time, which makes travel and planning difficult.”(more)