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Where Have All the Teachers Gone?

An Exploration of Teacher Shortages

and Possible Solutions

By Dorrie J. Powell

This article, part of a series by members of the Bulletin’s Editorial Board, explores the issue of
teacher shortages and their possible solutions. Board member Powell summarizes the results
of a DKG Editorial Board survey of DKG members, chapters, and state organizations regarding
current and potential best practices that could impact teacher shortages. Reported and
proposed practices, programs, and partnerships centered around support for new and veteran
teachers, mentorship of beginning teachers, and recruitment of prospective teachers.

his article’s title is a variation on the folk song “Where Have All the Flowers
TGone?” written by Peter Seeger in 1955. Seeger drew inspiration from a
traditional Cossack folk song, borrowed an Irish lumberjack melody, and crafted
lyrics that question, in succession, where the flowers, the young girls, and the
husbands have gone. In 1960, summer camp counselor Joe Hickerson was inspired
by his camp children’s light-hearted adaptations of the song to add two more serious
concluding verses, questioning where the soldiers and then the graveyards have gone
(Ellingham, 2022). (See music aggregator sites such as lyrics.com and azlyrics.com
for complete lyrics or audio performances.)
Hickerson’s final verse gives the song its circular pattern as the graveyards give
way again to fields of flowers (C. Jones, 2014). Recorded in every decade since its
composition by artists all over the world (Ellingham, 2022), “Where Have All the
Flowers Gone?” fits into the long tradition of lament literature, or ubi sunt, as the
verses question the disappearance of things once seen in abundance and now gone
from the landscape (C. Jones, 2014). In similar fashion, this article questions where
many of the teachers have gone, especially in certain schools, grade levels, areas of
specialization, and academic disciplines; what governments and communities are
doing about the shortage; and what role a professional organization such as Delta
Kappa Gamma might play in addressing such a shortage.

Teacher Shortage Background
During the 2022–2023 academic year, news outlets in Europe and the United
States began to sound the alarm about a teacher shortage. According to Euronews
(2022), there were reported shortages in 2022–2023 not only in France, Germany,
Portugal, Sweden, and Italy but in sub-Saharan Chad and Niger as well as the
United States. By February 2023, U.S. television networks such as ABC reported
that three-fourths of states in the United States were still facing teacher shortages
for the 2022–2023 school year, citing issues surrounding the teaching profession
that had been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic (A. Jones, 2023). Canadian
news sources reported provincial and territorial teacher shortages as the 2023–2024
school year began (Previl, 2023). While some pandemic-driven shortages, especially
in the United States, reflect newly created positions to help students deal with mental
health issues (A. Jones, 2023), others are the result of a decades-long shrinking

6 The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin: International Journal for Professional Educators