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Labor Day Blues #250 By Hank Silverberg Labor Day marks the traditional end of summer. For the most part v acations are over, schools are back in session, the baseball playoffs are looming and the campaigning season for the off-year elections in November is now getting hot. I'm back in the classroom as well at Northern Virginia Community College where I teach, and for the first time since late 2019 the desks are filled with students and my Zoom account sits unused. That's the good news. But there is a growing teacher shortage across the country. A study done by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University last January indicated there are about 36,000 vacant teaching jobs in elementary and secondary schools across the country, and as many as 163,000 teachers are holding jobs for which they are not technically qualified. Why is the shortage so large? Salaries are part of it, but certainly not the major reason. No one goes into te