NAM Radio: The Rise & Fall of the American Teacher

Sep. 26, 2011 / By

New America Media, Audio, Shirin Sadeghi, Posted: Sep 26, 2011

He’s that guy who takes care of your kids all day long everyday. She’s the friend they need when they’re alone. He’s the authority they turn to when they need help. He or she is your child’s teacher and teachers are a dying breed in America.

There are currently 3.2 million teachers in America, but in the next few years 1.8 million of them will be up for retirement. Of the other teachers, statistics indicate that 62% of them leave the profession within five years and it has nothing to do with not loving what they do.

Jonathan Dearman was a teacher in San Francisco for 5 years before he left the profession to go into his family business of real estate. He is one of a handful of teachers who are featured in the new documentary American Teacher and he told New America Now Host Shirin Sadeghi what it’s like to be an educator in America.

http://media.namx.org/audio/nan_radio/2011/09/deerman_americanteacher.mp3

New America Now is the radio program of New America Media. The program is hosted byShirin Sadeghi and is broadcast on 91.7 FM KALW San Francisco on Fridays at noon and Sundays at 3 pm.

New America Now’s Complete Show for September 23 and 25, 2011:

http://media.namx.org/audio/nan_radio/2011/09/NAN2011_09_23.mp3

Click here to follow Shirin Sadeghi on Twitter. 

To visit the archives of New America Now, please click here.  

New America Now is now available as a podcast through KALW and National Public Radio, so you can listen to the show on your MP3 player. Click here to subscribe.  

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New America Media

New America Media is the country's first and largest national collaboration and advocate of 3,000 ethnic news organizations. Over 57 million ethnic adults connect to each other, to home countries and to America through 3000+ ethnic media outlets, the fastest growing sector of American journalism. Founded by the nonprofit Pacific News Service in 1996, NAM is headquartered in California with offices in New York and Washington D.C., and partnerships with journalism schools to grow local associations of ethnic media.