happening all across the country. not without emotion. these are very tough issues and our children are in dire need. when we look for example, at the retirement of baby boomers, we will need to recruit about 1.6 million new teachers into the profession over the next several years. our campaign as the president s psa announced today hopes to do just that on teach.gov, individuals can find out how to become a teacher in every state in our great nation. well, it is a great job. my mom s an educator. i time. thank you for providing that psa exclusively to msnbc and news nation. thank you. new details on the washington man accused of placing a bomb at a martin luther king jr. day parade tops our look at stories around the news nation. kevin harpa is scheduled to be
teach. teach.gov. we re putting significant resources behind what we call certification teacher programs. i d a big fan of mid career changers. he gave two 20-pound sledge hammers. what s the benefit of having more african-american men in the classrooms? we goat to talk about our experiences and talk about the way things used to be, the way i think thises can be. we can give them hope. most of these kids don t have fathers. so i have to have that role. in our community, being smart is not cool. being a teacher is not cool. hopefully when i come into the classroom, i expose them to what a black man can be. excellent. you all make me feel like i taught something this year. steve perry, washington. [ female announcer ] last year, the u.s. used
this is a complicated problem. one thing i ve heard you say recently is that teachers have been beaten down. that they ve been stigmatized. as you look at that problem, what s the diagnosis. why has that happened? and are teachers unions a part of that? by some of the requirements, the certain amount of hours they ve got to work. in other words, making it less of a profession? probably 20 reasons why that s happened. what we want to do is not diagnose it going backwards. we want to move forwards and elevate the profession. and other countries out competing us educationally, teachers are revered. in south korea, teachers are known as nation builders. it s a really interesting concept. yesterday we launched this national campaign to recruit 1 million more teachers over the next five years as the baby boomer generation retires. we have this new website, teach.gov. we want to do everything we can over the next couple of years to bring in the hardest working, the best and the brightest.
looking at countries that jout perform us, finland, south korea, singapore, they re getting the best and brightest to go into education. we want to replicate that. five years from now i would like the best teaching workforce in the world. that s what we re committed to doing. let s give you hard statistics, however. we re in an economic downturn. in the 2010-2011 school district, 80% of the schools in the country will eliminate as many as 27,000 jobs. that doesn t look like the most promising job market to a lot of people trying to assess for their immediate future, maybe. well, it s a little bit tough short term. today, tom, if you look at teach.gov, there are a couple thousand teacher jobs available today. in january we have another set of folks retiring. there will be many more job opportunities. as the economy bounces back, you ll see the numbers change. we have to look over the horizon. big picture, we re going to need a million new teachers. this is going to be a booming sect