Imagine This!

I would research the reasons educators changed their career choice to other fields.  We are losing teachers at my center, and there is a shortage of teachers in the state of Georgia. My next door neighbor has a degree to teach early childhood, but that is not what she does. The research I would do is to find out the reasons we are losing teachers right out of college and others who change after working a short time in the classroom. Some would say that the field was not for them, and I am sure that is true for some. But I would be looking for answers to be used to save our teachers from leaving our field. One young lady told me she was done working with children because of her experience at a center. I persuaded her to not give up because of one bad experience, I explained that when you work with people there can be issues of some sort everywhere, but to give the field another try and she did.  She has been on her new job for two years, she is a good teacher, and loves children. If there was a study to find a common link, perhaps we could change the statistics, eliminating the shortage in Georgia. I would like to know if it was their training, their direct supervisors, the stress, children, whatever the reason to leave the field of their choice.  And maybe we can begin to address some issues with solutions before they result in loss of teachers. I think this research contribution to Early Childhood will be beneficial to our field, what do you think?

I thought this research was something I imagined, but after I wrote it I googled the idea and found that I am not the first to think of doing research about the shortage of teachers. I found several scholarly research articles all about the shortages of teachers.