Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/face-it-to/5026708/
As we begin the 2022-23 academic year, our nation has not yet recovered from the “Great Resignation” and the “She-cession”—phenomena that describes the record numbers of people, especially women, who left their jobs in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Both public and private employers are reevaluating their strategies for recruiting and retaining talent in response to a job market in flux.
Similarly, COVID-19 put a national spotlight on the fact that the sector which employs “The workforce for the workforce”—as child care staff are tagged—has a hard time recruiting and retaining skilled and experienced teachers. Immediate workforce remedies included financial incentives, stabilization grant programs, and policy adjustments to ease the field’s administrative burden (The Hunt Institute, 2021).
Now as we enter the third year of the pandemic, the public strongly desires “normalcy,” and putting the pandemic in the rear-view mirror (Gramlich, 2022). Yet, we resist the call to normalcy since it has never been an effective strategy for our profession, or for the children and families with whom we work. As other industries move toward COVID-19 recovery, our field-wide challenges persist and our forward progression is stalled. That is why continuous construction of a climate of change is needed now more than ever.