Schools and Districts continue to look for ways to grow their teaching staff’s professionalism, skills, efficacy, and their positive impact on their students and the community. The State of New Jersey Department of Education has even created a teacher evaluation system where teachers must earn effective or highly effective evaluative status in order to stay off the “In need of improvement” lists and face measures to increase their ratings or face the loss of tenure and his or her employment.
In New Jersey, teachers have a framework to earn points for their effectiveness rating. The framework is well defined and addresses all areas that impact teachers, the students, the school, and the community. It has been recognized that there are teachers who rise above and excel in certain areas. Not only do they excel, but they demonstrate great leadership and help guide other teachers in improving their practices. In 2018, the State of New Jersey developed a teacher leader endorsement program that would harness, grow, and recognize the leadership the effective and highly effective teachers in New Jersey can bring to their schools.
The State created the endorsement program. However, they left it to the school districts to decide if a monetary or higher status position was obtainable from earning the endorsement. The endorsement does not necessarily earn teacher graduate credits, a master’s degree, or a license to do another job within education in New Jersey. The program is still in its infancy as of the year 2020 - 2021. Currently, those interviewed were in the first group of teachers to complete the one-year endorsement program.
This research gathers data from teachers currently enrolled in the Teacher Leader Endorsement Program to learn more about their experiences, where they were novice teachers, and now, as experienced teachers, and what led them to enroll in the program. This research takes a dive into the relationship between the teacher and his or her principal, district grooming, school culture, and if monetary compensation must be a factor in having a robust enrollment in this endorsement program.
Since the spring of 2020, there has been a massive cultural shift in the American political atmosphere. Many of the underlying political tensions that have been ignored have suddenly come to the forefront of American politics. Along with more mobilization of left-wing political factions, there has been a staggering rise in right-wing movements. The COVID-19 pandemic has in many ways brought to attention some of the severe inequalities our current system produces as well as its fragile state of it. The pandemic has stifled years of economic growth since the Great Recession, leading to millions losing their jobs. The pandemic itself has put a massive strain on our healthcare system and has led to hundreds of thousands of Americans dead, and many more with chronic side effects. All of us in some way have been affected by the pandemic, whether it be socially, economically, physically, or mentally. In times of societal struggle and strife, however, there are political factions that thrive on this mass anxiety and aim
to use that in order to garner support for their cause. Such groups are typically aligned with right-wing extremism and white supremacy. What this paper aims to do is examine how white supremacists and right-wing extremists have adapted their propaganda and recruitment tactics to COVID-19 and took advantage of the mass anxiety that came as a result.