ABSTRACT
The US public school teaching force includes approximately 30,000 teachers whose primary responsibility it is to serve the nearly 400,000 students labeled as “seriously emotionally disturbed”. Most national studies of teachers either group all special educators into a single category or set aside special educators altogether, thereby making it difficult to provide a detailed description of the group of teachers who serve students with emotional or behavioral disorders. The phenomenon of female teachers leaving in order to raise a family and then returning to the work force has been known for years, but data suggests that the number of older women entering the teaching force is increasing. Both resource room and self-contained teachers reported moderate satisfaction with most aspects of their working conditions. Teachers’ perceptions of the rewards they receive in helping children learn have been described by many researchers.
