Today is my first day back at school.

<em>Hello</em>, ACS!

I've been looking forward to getting back into my classroom, making some plans and getting organized, catching up with my colleagues and writing letters of recommendation for some of my favorite students (and I am going to be busy with 18+ letters to write. That's slightly more than half of the 11th graders I taught last year).

So I'm sad to say that I find myself kind of bummed out about school in general. The fact is, I just read this article about <a href="http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=142863" target="_blank">the fact that Bulgaria  is threatened by a shortage of teachers</a>.

I've know for a long time about the poor state of education in Bulgaria but here's the breakdown in numbers according to the article (and my commentary in parenthetical asides):
<ul>
	<li>The average age of teachers in Bulgaria is 50. (That means that these teachers are 30+ years older than their students.)</li>
	<li>The (maybe) average salary is 650 leva (or 325 Euro) a month but the average salary is very likely less than this. (How can anyone afford to live on this?! Answer: you can't. So Bulgarian teachers take a second job. How can you be a good teacher with 2+ jobs? Answer: I think it's difficult at best. )</li>
	<li>There is a shortage of teachers in the sciences. (Um, <em>oh no</em>!)</li>
	<li>There are practically no male teachers. (This means there are basically no male role models for young men and women.)</li>
</ul>
Phew. That's depressing.

Then I wondered if my school ACS is included in this survey. It's interesting because in the English department at ACS we've got a 50/50 split male and female teachers and I would guess our average age is probably 35-37 and this is the oldest average it's been in a while. Then thinking about our school as a whole, there are certainly more female teachers than male teachers but not overwhelmingly so.  If our numbers are included in this, what would the numbers look like without us?

Only I didn't spend too much time thinking about this because there are clearly bigger issues to worry about and it boils down to this: the Ministry of Education doesn't get it. What are they doing?!?

I think this becomes especially clear when the Ministry of Education dismisses out of hand the problem regarding the shortage of teachers. The article explains the Ministry believes that they have "no reasons for alarm over the number of teachers in the country on grounds the number of students is also going down."

Oh, it's <em>almost</em> laughable.

The only thing is, I pretty sure they are serious and this makes me sad. It also makes me wonder this big, hard question: <em>how can anyone get an education in a country like this?</em>

I'm afraid that they can't.

So here I am. I'm left doing the only thing I can do.I shake my head and go to school. I find myself glad that I'm working at the American College of Sofia and sad for everyone else. And for the record, I hate this feeling.