Lack of Jobs For Teachers

Recently I read comments by teachers complaining because of the excess of Education grads without jobs. One person went as far as to suggest that the OCT only licence 66 per cent of the graduates each year. As a fellow teacher I'm quite appalled by their ignorance.
I do not deny that there is a shortage of jobs but limiting the number of graduates being licensed is not going to solve the problem.

How would it be proper to deny licensing to a perfectly qualified and motivated teacher? How would you even begin to choose who gets licensed and who doesn't? Choose all those with last names between A-K? Exempt all teachers not trained in Ontario? Have a random lottery? Take only those that graduated out of a concurrent program and ignore those that were doing only their one year BEd? Seriously, how on earth could someone think that that is a viable solution?

The licensing body for any profession is responsible for regulating the profession and it's members - not finding them jobs. In no University's literature does it give a money-back guarantees if you don't find a job after 6 months of graduating. Anyone entering into school for Education knows perfectly well what the job prospects are like. If they don't like the odds, don't become a teacher. It is the responsibility of the teacher to find themselves work and teachers are not being treated any differently than any other profession.

If anything has changed it's that we now live in a society where many people feel they are entitled to certain things. It is the age of entitlement where people think that they don't have to work for anything. They believe that everything should just be given to them.

I am a teacher, who chose not to teach. I did at one time find it very frustrating that I couldn't get a job teaching in my home town. In fact, I have several friends that have had to find other work because a full-time teaching position could not be found. My small hometown had more teachers than they had jobs and that has been the case for many years before the rest of the province started feeling the crunch.

It was an accepted fact that you were going to have to work in places that would not be your first choice. This included isolated fly-in Northern communities or smaller towns on the outskirts of my small town. None of which were particuarly appealing for outsiders. If you were someone who's passion and lifelong dream it was to teach then you would do whatever it took to find a job.
Finding a job as a teacher today in the province of Ontario is down to how badly do you want it. What are you willing to do to get it? Are you willing to work supply and use that time to make contacts? Are you willing to go to an isolated community and teach there? Are you willing to go the extra mile? Most importantly - are you willing to be patient?

Of course the rising cost of post-secondary education makes it difficult for grads to be patient. Many come out of school bearing $30 000 worth of debt or more. They need a good paying job quickly. The one solution to that is - teach in another country. If it comes to being that desperate take a job teaching English overseas. Stop blaming everyone else for the problem. Take it upon yourself to find a solution instead of moping in the corner and blaming everyone else for it.

Having to leave your hometown when you don't want to is rotten. I can relate to that. I had to do it so I know. That being said, I don't have sympathy for people that stay put in one place and constantly whine about not finding work in their chosen profession. The only person who is going to change that is you. If you can't find a job where you are, then you go where you can find a job. If that doesn't suit you then you give up that career path for one that will get you a job where you want to be. It is that simple. But for goodness sakes stop blaming everyone else for it!