Originally Posted by Lightdemon

The actual statistic is: Half of all new teachers will quit before the end of thier 5th year of teaching.

Quite different from being "average." But I'm sure we all understood your point that many teachers do not stay in this career. I'm just being nit picky.

Most often what I hear nowadays is that CA is not lacking qualified teachers, as thier are many more people with credentials than there are actuals teachers. I think it's something like a 5:1 ratio (I'll probably have to look it up if you want that actual numbers). There are plenty of qualified teachers in our state, it's just not a lot of them can make that sacrifice.

Regarding assignments, one of my collegues was a theatre major and had a degree in English. He had planned to become a drama teacher of course. But to his dismay, and because he held an English degree, he was qualified to teach ESL and he had no choice but to accept the assignment because he signed the yearly contract.