Affiliation:
1. West Chester University of Pennsylvania, USA
Abstract
<i>The population of certified special education teachers working and remaining in secondary emotional support classrooms continues to dwindle across the nation. This causes more and more students with Emotional Disturbance to work with a frequent turnover of educators or emergency-certified educators with possibly no prior experience. High school students who receive emotional support services are a vulnerable population that requires a supportive and well-trained special education teacher to help them make academic, emotional, and behavioral progress in the school setting and in achieving their post-secondary goals. This qualitative study explored five veteran schoolteachers’ experiences to identify the factors that have helped them remain in their careers and which ones discourage them from staying. The individual and focus group interviews identified several job-related factors that are consistent with previous literature (diverse student needs), evolution in some (administrator and colleague support), and different or newly identified factors (willingness to take risks, advocating for secondary student’s needs, educator’s personality) that require additional exploration.</i>