Education Week - January 27, 2016 - S7

EDUCATION WEEK
Teacher-Recruitment Challenges

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January 27, 2016

www.edweek.org/go/teacher-recruitment

By Elisha McNeil

Teaching Network Grooms H.S. Students
Program aims to
boost local pipelines

ith schools across the
country struggling to
find enough teachers
and diversify their
staf fs, some communities are looking
more seriously at
the idea of "growing
your own." If you can't find the teachers you
need, the thinking goes, develop them.
That's essentially the idea behind a newly
relaunched program associated with the
professional association PDK International.
Educators Rising, formerly known as Future Educators Association, is a national
network working to help school systems
guide young people on the path to teaching
starting in high school.
Launched last August, the free service
connects teachers and school leaders with
expertise and resources to support them in
preparing students interested in teaching-
and ultimately in building stronger local
pipelines of future educators.
Grow-your-own programs are not a new
idea in K-12 education. They have a long
history in some communities, particularly
as a vehicle to prepare racial- and ethnicminority educators and those for hard-tostaff fields. But they've often been fragmented in approach, small in scale, and
reliant on uncertain support.
Whether Educators Rising can change
that dynamic remains to be seen, since its
current cadre of student participants has
yet to enter college.
But the organization believes that bringing cohesion and stronger resource support
to local efforts can help create a new-and
currently much-needed-"front end" in
teacher development, according to Dan

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the past three years because of robust recruitment on the island. The district has
roughly 150 teachers from Spain working in
schools. The number of hires has remained
relatively steady each year because of visa
limitations.
Houston has hired about 50 teachers from
Spain and 10 from Puerto Rico in each of
the past two years, but would like to see
those numbers increase. The district does
not track the total number of teachers from
those countries, Ruiz said.
As a superintendent in California in the
1990s, Wood recruited teachers from Spain,
Mexico, Central America, and Asia.
Recruiting internationally gives districts
another option for hiring bilingual teachers
and helps them get seasoned instructors,
Wood said.
Spain's Education Ministry operates
more than 20 regional offices in the United

States, with two in Texas. To participate in
Spain's placement program, teachers must
have at least three years of experience, and
they must commit to working three years
in the United States. Teachers' travel costs,
and sometimes the recruiting trips for districts, are covered by the Spanish government.

Tough Adjustment
The transition, however, is often not as
smooth for teachers who make the move
from Spain.
Adjusting to a new country and education
system has led some homesick teachers to
return to Spain after several weeks or midyear, school officials say, leaving recruiters
to once again hire for jobs that proved difficult to fill the first time around.
Another challenge is the possible cultural
disconnect between Spanish speakers from
Spain and U.S. English-learners, most of

Brown, a former teacher who is a co-director of Educators Rising.
"There's an apparent self-interest for communities to grow their own [teachers], and
we want to provide an army of support in
the background to help them do that well,"
Brown said. "I hope that we'll be able to get
to a place where every community is really
thinking proactively about growing their
own highly skilled teachers, and Educators
Rising aims to be a national partner to help
with that."
Educators Rising currently has some
11,000 members, including both studentparticipants and the teachers and administrators who lead the program at their
schools. The network is operating in some
850 high schools and has partnerships
with 11 states and two regions, in Boston
and New York City. Forty-nine percent of
the 10,000 student members are racial and
ethnic minorities-a rate that far outpaces
the 17-percent minority makeup of the current U.S. teaching profession.

Exploring Possibilities
The schools affiliated with Educators
Rising provide the on-the-ground implementation, creating and running their
own teacher-preparation co-curricular programs or elective courses at the high school
level. The courses are often integrated into
schools' career-and-technical-education programs or offered as extracurriculars.
At the national level, the organization
provides crowdsourced and curated lesson plans, teaching materials, and other
resources, including a virtual "campus"
feature that houses teaching-practice
videos and connects members with experts and other stakeholders. The curriculum includes courses on human
growth and development and curriculum
and instruction, as well as a teaching internship.

We have to be
competitive [and]
make it appealing
for people who want
to come here."
JANIE RUIZ
Senior Manager of Recruitment
Houston Independent School District

Educators Rising also offers national
conferences, competitions, scholarships,
an honors society, and-starting this
year-a micro-credentialing system to
help students document the skills they've
mastered. (Additional support services,
such as mentoring and job-search guidance, are available to student members
when they enter college.) In addition, the
group is working with the National Board
for Professional Teaching Standards on a
set of standards for what students need
to know to become successful educators.
"We provide students and teacher leaders with leadership training, opportunities
to partner with organizations and work in
communities, and encourage innovation,"
said Rachael Mann, the coordinator of Educators Rising's Arizona affiliate. "We train
our students to look beyond what currently
is happening in education and explore all of
the possibilities of what could be."
Aubrey Gray, a senior at Pickerington
High School Central in Ohio, near Columbus, and an Educators Rising participant,
said the program has given her a better
grasp of her career direction.
"I've learned a lot of the basics about education, such as equity and classroom management," Gray said. "I've learned so much
from being able to actually go out and observe classrooms and spend time with students and teachers in their real, day-to-day
routines. I cherish my observation days, and
they make me even more excited about having my own classroom one day."
Generating that kind of enthusiasm about
a profession that is often disparaged is key
to Educators Rising's mission.
"The core of our vision from the beginning has been about engaging bright
young people with a rigorous, authentic,
hands-on opportunity to explore teaching," said Brown. "Our goal is to catalyze
a movement around the central idea that
there's power in teaching."

whom hail from Mexico, the Caribbean, or
Central America.
"You're not going to have a Mexican kid
speaking like a Spaniard," said Uro of the
Council of Great City Schools.
"But the cultural relevance and fit goes both
ways. Some of the teachers get here and have
trouble adjusting. What do you do then?"
Uro has witnessed the adjustment firsthand, having hosted a bilingual teacher
from Spain in her home.
"It can be tough," she said.
To ease the transition for the new international and Puerto Rican teachers, Houston
and Dallas staff help their new hires find
housing and transportation and help them
connect with each other.
"Our goal is to set them up for success so
they want to stay," said Ruiz of the Houston schools.
"There are some who do go back. But if
they're doing well, ultimately, our kids will
do well."

http://www.edweek.org/go/teacher-recruitment

Education Week - January 27, 2016

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