Hey Tappsters!
Welcome to the USA Teacher Tapp blog ๐ Week THIRTEEN of tapping! Welcome to all who joined this week!
Now everyone is back to school after the holidays, not everyone has returned feeling as refreshed and as relaxed as they might have: more than a third (35%) were struck down with an illness in the holidays.
Share the app with your colleagues and help grow the community. The best link to spread the word is onelink.to/teachertapp โ it takes them straight to the app store! ๐ฒโจ
Now let’s get into the data…
1. Cyber attacks
Cybersecurity incidents have been hitting the headlines recently when a company that provides cloud-based services for schools was the target of a ransomware attack. Schools store sensitive data such as names, addresses, and social security numbers, making them prime targets for hackers.
How common are cybersecurity incidents? Phishing scams were by far the most common (35%) with other incidents only reaching single figures (ransomware 2% and hacking 1%).
For those teachers in schools where they have experienced a cyber attack, more than one in ten felt it was critically damaging for the school (15%).
2. Teacher pay
Maths and physics teachers are in short supply in most states – so should pay reflect that demand?
Many think, yes – absolutely! 69% agree there should be higher pay for teachers of shortage subjects, of those 28% strongly agree. In contrast, 31% disagree with the idea, of those just 14% strongly disagreeing.
These findings are VERY different to the results from the English panel: just 16% agreed with the idea of different pay scales for subjects – even though England faces similar problems to the US in terms of recruitment.
Of course, sometimes an idea in principle seems sound but implementation might cause problems: for example, how do you pay a teacher who teaches maths PLUS another non-shortage subject? Or only covers maths on a temporary basis? Or, was employed originally as a maths teacher but then you need them to cover another subject…do they have a pay cut?
Non-salary based perks
While pay is important, non-salary perks can also make a difference in teacher satisfaction. This week other school-based issues that can make jobs less appealing: 33% work in schools where parking isn’t always guaranteed and 1 in 10 (10%) are in schools with so few faculty-only bathrooms, they have to walk three minutes or more to get to a bathroom from their classroom.
Do you have a top ‘teaching perk’ that makes your job more appealing? Share with us by getting in touch via the contact us in your app.
3. CPD
The number of hours of Continuous Professional Development (CPD) that teachers must complete each year is dictated in 60% of schools.
Of those who have a fixed number of hours to complete, around a third can do them during school time (34%), and 12% must do it in their own time, with the rest (54%) allowed to do a mix of school and personal time.
Of course, a required target is meaningless unless there is a consequence of not reaching it – so what do different schools do to incentivise teachers to complete their CPD? Fortunately, Teacher Tappers came to the rescue, with more than 50 sharing their experiences.
From reading responses, we learned…
๐ซ The majority of replies said that their teaching licence would be under question or removed.
๐คท๐ฝ Many were unclear about what the consequences would be.
๐ธ A small number mentioned pay deductions or the requirement to go into school to complete training during the holidays.
The good news is, that the vast majority (73%) agree they have access to CPD. However, access is just part of the story: only half (50%) feel their school gives sufficient time for professional development.
โ Our first 100+ day streak!
Yippee! We have our first 100+ day Teacher Tappers ๐คฉ
Answering questions on the app every day shows real dedication – and although we appreciate every single tappster – whether you answer every single day, or whenever you remember – the dedication of those with long streaks is something that makes everyone here at Teacher Tapp seriously impressed!
Congratulations to our first users who have passed the 100 day streak mark – you are in the top 2% of all US Teacher Tappers. That is remarkable!
In the UK and Europe teachers have been answering questions for a much longer time and so their streaks have hit four figures.
๐ง๐ช In Belgian, the longest streak is over 1,500 ๐.
๐ณ๐ฑ In the Netherlands, some Tappers have clocked up over 1,600 day streaks ๐คฉ.
๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ฅ๓ ฎ๓ ง๓ ฟ In England, there are Tappers with 2,000 day streaks ๐ณ.
Daily Reads
We know lots of teachers on Teacher Tapp LOVE the daily reads, if you have ideas of reads we could feature, get in touch by emailing usa@teachertapp.com and we will check it out!
This week our most-read blog was about why the Forgetting Curve isn’t useful for teaching.
