Accentuate the Positive: Special Education Teacher Job Satisfaction and Joy

Special education teacher attrition combined with declining college preparation program enrollments has resulted in a shortage of crisis proportion America. Additionally, teachers are often underfunded, overstressed, and burdened societal political pressures that have been brewing since before the pandemic. In spite this, continue to value work they do their classrooms, many even find joy doing. This paper examined both job satisfaction by analyzing self-reported, Likert scale data, as well collected through open-ended questioning. Results indicated reported highest levels related coworkers. Teacher joy, however, was almost exclusively product working closely students. These findings potential impact retention recruitment positive ways.