Jayci Gesling returned to teaching Spanish at Centralia High School this fall after nine years raising three kids and starting a play cafe for Mid-Missouri parents. When she saw the job offering in her children’s district, she jumped at the opportunity. It’s only been a few weeks, but Gesling has already had conversations about the differences since she was last in the classroom a decade ago.
“Teenagers have not changed. Now, what they're listening to, reading, seeing; the pace of their lives may have changed, but kids, 14, 15, 16, 17-year-old kids are still kids,” she said.
Though she was a parent during the pandemic, Gesling wondered how it would affect educators. As parents were now having to be an additional support for kids and be responsible for their behaviors, Gesling hoped the pandemic would shed light on the challenges educators face in the classroom.
“I expected education funding to increase. I expected teacher pay to increase. I expected parents to finally get on board with like, oh my gosh, this job is terribly hard, and I do not want to do it at home,” Gesling said. “You didn't want to homeschool them at your house, but nobody wants to make any legislative changes or financial changes to provide people with what they need to do their job. So that was just crazy to me.”
Every year, the Missouri State Teachers Association surveys educators across the state. Over the last three years, about 70% of respondents considered leaving the profession. They consistently noted student behavior as their greatest stressor, followed by lack of student motivation and insufficient support from administrators.
MSTA spokesperson Todd Fuller said discipline has always been an issue for teachers, but behavior paired with lack of proper support from parents and administrators has added to the stress.
“After COVID, it seems like things changed in terms of the expectations, in terms of how a classroom should be managed,” he said. “In some cases, we've heard teachers say that parents aren't as engaged as they were. They're not as concerned with their students being in class as they were before COVID.”
Interest in online learning rises as more opportunities open up
In 2022, a legislation funneled more money to charter schools and made adjustments to MOCAP, the Missouri Course Access and Virtual School Program. The legislation streamlined access to online learning programs, and made it easier for state residents to learn fully online.
There are multiple full-time virtual public schools in Missouri that link to a host school district somewhere in the state. Students interested in enrolling with these full-time providers would essentially transfer to one of these districts while remaining in their hometown and learning entirely online.
And K-12 students are doing just that. For the 2021-2022 school year, MOCAP reported roughly 3,000 students were enrolled in full-time. By the 2024-2025 school year, that number had more than quadrupled to over 14,000.
“We saw homeschooling jump from maybe 30,000 students statewide before the pandemic to about 60,000 now, and we don't see really any evidence that that is going to return or reverse,” said Collin Hitt, Executive Director at St. Louis University’s Prime Center. Hitt researches patterns in education across Missouri and said the number of homeschooled students is similar to the number of public school students in St. Louis and Kansas City combined. Though not all homeschooled students are using online programs or academies, Hitt suspects at least half of them are taking advantage of online tools.
“Ask anybody that's inside brick and mortar schools, and they'll say that things feel different. Not only since the pandemic, but certainly over the last decade or so,” Hitt said.
But a few years of dramatic increases doesn’t necessarily mean that growth will continue, said Marlie Williams, DESE Virtual Education Administrator. In her preliminary research for the most recent school year, Williams noted the growing numbers appear to be leveling off.
“What you see with some families is that they found that online learning was absolutely not a good fit for them and their children,” Williams said. “For some other families, sometimes online learning is the option that's a best fit.”
If there’s more demand for online education, are more remote teachers needed?
Special education teacher Kourtney McAfee lives in Mexico, Missouri, and has been working full-time for one of MOCAP’s affiliates, Missouri Virtual Academy, for two years.
One of the main reasons she went online was because she saw a lot of her students’ needs not being met in-person.
“I was noticing that a lot of my special education students were experiencing distractability or their dysregulation was very difficult for them to maintain in person, and I wanted to see some more support,” she said.
McAfee said virtual teaching has helped her both at work and at home. It’s allowed her to aid a sick loved one, and she also finds it easier to work with students’ “learning coaches” — guardians who support student learning from home.
“Just like students and families, we all have our different needs and you know different desires and dreams in life. And providing various education platforms or different classes or programs that are online will only spark the interest for educators to apply for those programs or those jobs,” she said.
DESE is not currently tracking the number of remote educators in the state. As online educators only need the same credentials as in-person educators, Williams said the need for teachers is likely similar.
“If there is a parallel between the online and the in-person, where educator shortages are concerned, it is likely. But it would be an assumption on my part to say that it is similarly challenging to find educators who are certified in some of those high need areas,” Williams said.
Missouri is ranked 49th in the nation for a teacher’s starting salary and 48th for average salary. In the 2023–2024 school year, more than one-in-five early-career teachers departed their school districts or Missouri public education altogether, according to the Prime Center.
Hitt said there is still a lot to learn about the impact of virtual learning on educators. Still, he said the growing demand means at least some educators are interested.
“There's without a doubt some educators who are pivoting to this environment,” Hitt said. “Will there be teachers coming straight out of college and choosing this as their first job? That's an open question that we don't have an answer to yet.”
But Fuller doesn't believe virtual education will replace in-person learning.
“I think if you were to ask almost any public school teacher if they had the choice of in-person learning or remote learning, they're going to pick in-person learning every time,” Fuller said.
Gesling came back to the classroom this year for the students. And while she sees the benefits of online teaching, she doesn’t think she'd ever go online.
“I think that districts and administrators will like it because of the cost and the effectiveness and getting the credits out of the way in a shorter amount of time,” Gesling said. “I don't think your classroom teachers are ever going to be like, ‘Oh, this is the way we need to do it, just because it replaces all the reasons that we came into the classroom to start with.’”
