A Look Back
How will ‘Generation Me, Me, Me’ work for others’ children
By Mary C. Clement
April 2016, pp. 30-34
Although the features of Gen Z educators are unique, the notion that schools must evolve to fit the changing needs, expectations, and desires of their workforce is not. In 2016, professor of teacher education Mary C. Clement urged Kappan readers to adjust their hiring, induction, and workplace structures to attract and retain teachers from the millennial generation, loosely defined as those born between the years of 1980 and 1994.
Providing a new type of employment experience — with opportunities for collaboration, supportive coaching, and leadership — isn’t just a nice perk to boost morale among the newest generation of teachers, she argues. It’s essential to stabilizing the national teacher workforce. When millennial teachers don’t find working conditions that fit their expectations of what it takes for them to be successful in the classroom “attrition rates increase, and high attrition is costly in many respects,” Clement writes. Without a stable workforce, schools struggle to implement instruction that is coherent, comprehensive, and unified.
Clement urges readers to reflect on how supports for a new generation can benefit even veteran educators. “I am not a millennial, but everything I have read about the expectations of this generation of workers — and teachers — matches my own expectations for how I should be treated in the workplace,” she writes. “Helping newly hired millennial teachers helps all educators, and when educators are supported, their students’ chances for success are improved.”
Conversation Piece
This issue of Kappan focuses on the new generation of teachers. Use these questions to reflect on the topic with your colleagues:
- How is the current generation of new teachers similar to and different from past generations?
- What specific qualities do new teachers bring to the workforce that will benefit schools and students?
- What are some of the specific difficulties that you think new teachers today will face?
- How can schools become more welcoming to new teachers and equip them for success in their careers?
- What ideas do you have for improving teacher preparation so new teachers enter the classroom ready for their careers?
PDK members have access to discussion guides related to specific articles in each issue of Kappan. Log in to the member portal and access the discussion guides at https://members.pdkintl.org/PDK_Member_Discussion_Questions.
Research Notes
Gen Z and the teaching profession
The next generation of teachers may want to reimagine the way schools work, but they are also seeking security. Gen Z, born between 1996 and 2012, entered or will enter the workforce during the onset or aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. They saw the rise of smartphones, lived through an economic recession, and came of age during a time of heightened national and international tensions. “Overall, Generation Z seeks support and stability,” a new report from the Southern Regional Education Board notes. “To attract this generation into teaching, the profession must be seen as stable and supportive, with opportunities for advancement.”
Although Gen Z is less interested in the education profession than earlier generations, their core values, unique experiences, and aspirations could serve as motivating factors. Members of Gen Z are more worried about societal problems than other generations and want jobs that give them a sense of purpose. They also prioritize mental wellness and a caring work environment. Prospective Gen Z teachers want training in cultural competency, assistance in handling discipline problems, and opportunities to advocate for the mental health needs of educators and students.
“We depend on Generation Z to fill a growing number of vacancies and hard-to-fill teaching positions,” notes the report, which draws on survey data from Kentucky and Tennessee. “(S)chools need to adjust many of their historic structures and policies to be attractive workplaces for this generation.”
Source: Booker, L., Ellison, A., Smith, T., Boren, M., Pierce, S., & Nadzam, J. (2024). The next generation of teachers: A study of Generation Z’s interest in the teaching profession. Southern Regional Education Board and the Tennessee Education Research Alliance at Vanderbilt University.
“There is a generational gap between new teachers and their school leaders. They need to avoid stereotyping millennial and Gen Z teachers … they should focus on the strengths that this new generation of educators bring to the table.” — Marco Muñoz, quoted in Education Week in March. Muñoz serves as assistant director of retention, engagement, and analytics for the Jefferson County school district in Louisville, Kentucky.
Teacher satisfaction in the post-COVID era
Many teachers today experience a disconnect between their on-the-job working conditions and what they need to be most effective and engaged in the classroom, according to a new report from the Walton Family Foundation and Gallup. The survey confirms that most teachers who are satisfied with their workload and pay are satisfied with their jobs overall. Yet on average, survey respondents reported working 50 hours per week, 55% were dissatisfied by their pay, and 30% said they did not have the opportunity to do what they do best every day.
Results were based on the Teaching for Tomorrow survey conducted Oct. 29-Nov. 25, 2024, with a sample of 1,989 U.S. teachers working in public K-12 schools.
Other factors found to influence teacher satisfaction include opportunities to collaborate with colleagues and the presence of supportive school leaders. Addressing these factors could assist teachers at a critical time, report authors note. Past surveys have revealed that the teaching profession is currently experiencing high levels of burnout as educators work to address pandemic-era learning loss among students. “Meeting this moment requires a full understanding of the support teachers need to not only thrive in their own roles, but ultimately, to meet their students’ needs in an unprecedented and rapidly changing learning environment.”
Source: Gallup & Walton Family Foundation. (2025). Teaching for tomorrow: Educators on the future of their profession.
Unintended consequences of alternative certification
Expanding teacher certification options has long been considered a strategy to address teacher shortages. But a 2023 study examining the effects of a Texas policy expanding alternative paths to licensure found a surprising outcome. Although the shift — initiated in 2001 — increased the state’s supply of teachers, pay for incoming elementary school teachers declined by 2% to 13%.
“This association has the potential to instigate a vicious cycle of turnover: Teachers may exit the classroom because reduced wages make the profession unsustainable, and districts must scramble to recruit each successive round of rapidly certified teacher replacements, offering lower salaries,” researchers note. “As the United States struggles nationwide to fill vacant teaching positions, we must consider the possibility that expanding alternative licensure programs alone may not be an efficient solution to mitigating teacher shortages.”
Source: Guthery, S. & Bailes, L. P. (2023). Unintended consequences of expanding teacher preparation pathways: Does alternative licensure attenuate new teacher pay? AERA Open, 9.
“I imagine myself being a teacher who believes in glitter, fun, and laughter. Someone who inspires students to reach their fullest potential. Someone who always reminds her students that it’s never a bad day for a snow cone or doughnut.”
— Journey Harris, quoted in a PDK Educators Rising blog post in June. Harris served as the 2024-25 Educators Rising national student president.
Acknowledging instances of racial harm supports new teachers of color
Confronting racism and discrimination is a common experience for teachers of color (TOC). Yet an in-depth study centered on the experiences of three first-year minority teachers found that the topic wasn’t addressed in their cross-racial mentoring partnerships. Their white teacher mentors didn’t initiate race-based conversations, and the new educators didn’t broach the subject — even though each said they experienced multiple forms of racism and discrimination from colleagues, administrators, and students during their first year on the job.
Researchers say the report shines a light on the need for mentors to be trained to address topics related to race and racism in the induction process. “In this study, we learned three early career teachers of color were forced to deal with racial aggression and racism alone, despite having a formal mentor,” study authors note. “Our findings and analysis highlight the importance of bringing race and racism to the forefront in university-based mentoring practices in ways that address and challenge the racial harm that early career TOC experience as they enter a profession normed around whiteness.”
Source: Daly, A., Vlach, S. K., Tily, S., Murdter-Atkinson, J., & Maloch, B. (2024). “I never explicitly brought that up to my mentor”: Early career teachers of color navigating whiteness with white mentors in a university-based induction program. Urban Education, 60 (7), 1942-1973.
Expanding new teachers’ understanding of equity and equality
A study asking preservice teachers in Texas to describe equity and equality revealed limitations in the ways future educators define these important concepts. A majority described them in technical terms, often citing the equitable distribution of tangible resources for children to achieve the same goal. But a much broader and more humanizing approach is needed in the current sociopolitical context, researchers assert. Such a pedagogy would move beyond technical approaches to education; embrace a critical consciousness of power struggles; and spur self-reflection, action, and a sense of responsibility among educators. “In particular, the definition of equitable instruction must include explicit notions of how power may privilege some while acting as barriers to others,” the authors write.
Source: Kwok, M., Su-Keene, E., & Rios, A. (2025). Preservice teachers’ conceptualizations of equity and equality: Tensions between technical and humanizing approaches. Journal of Teacher Education, 76 (2), 121-135.
Grow Your Own programs on the rise
Grow Your Own teacher pathways are becoming increasingly prevalent in the U.S. A working paper from the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University found that GYO initiatives were operating in at least 40 states as of March 2022. And although such programs varied widely in their scope and scale, a “single, near universal feature” was their focus on increasing the teacher supply by supporting local aspiring educators in their journey toward a teaching degree.
To maximize effectiveness of such programs, researchers say GYO leaders would be wise to not only work to increase interest in the profession, but also to decrease barriers to entry. Of the 94 GYO programs studied, only half provided scholarships or stipends to participants. “Future GYO programs, especially those targeting high school students, may need to increase financial and academic assistance to ensure participants become teachers,” the paper notes.
Source: Edwards, D. S. & Kraft, M. A. (2024). Grow your own: An umbrella term for very different localized teacher pipeline programs. [Annenberg Institute at Brown University, EdWorkingPaper: 24-895].
This article appears in the Fall 2025 issue of Kappan, Vol. 107, No. 1-2, pp. 5–7.
