California officials preparing for rise in new teacher jobs
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| Felipe Golez, California State University education professor, talks to student teachers about future job prospects. ADOLFO GUZMAN-LOPEZ/KPCC |
Over the past seven years, enrollment in higher education programs that prepare candidates for teaching plummeted sharply. Teacher layoffs and fewer openings kept many away from the profession.
With the economy now improving, school districts have ramped up hiring and California is poised for a turnabout in teacher credentialing.
“Perhaps a decade ago, we were issuing 26,000 teaching credentials. In the 2012-2013 year, it was just over 15,000,” said Mary Vixie Sandy, the executive director of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, the state agency that certifies teachers.
Today, school districts are again putting out the help-wanted signs, says Cindy Grutzik, associate dean for undergraduate and post-baccalaureate programs at California State University, Long Beach, College of Education.
"It’s more than a trickle," Grutzik said. "I would say last year we started to hear that the teachers that had been laid off were being rehired. So that was their first group to go to. And then now that those positions are filled, retirements are starting to happen and jobs are opening up."
Cal State Long Beach student teachers like Katie Rogers, who ignored the poor job prospects and stuck with their commitment to become educators, will be among the first to benefit.
“My 4th grade teacher was amazing, and from 4th grade on, I imagined myself teaching the way she taught,” said Rogers.For fellow student Kelly O’Connor, becoming a teacher is like joining the family business.
"My older sister is a teacher. She’s been teaching for like 20 years in Santa Ana school district. And she would just always have me in her class helping her out. So I was like, 'This is so much fun' — and you get summers off if you want," O'Connor said.
Cal State Long Beach Education Professor Felipe Golez says in the years when school districts were hiring heavily, he’d get people who weren’t as passionate. Some weighed teaching and, maybe, law enforcement. He didn’t think that was right.
"I think it’s good thing for children to have teachers who really want to be teachers, and that apply themselves to learn how to work with children and want to do a little extra all the time," he said. "If you think of great teachers you’ve had they’ve always California officials preparing for rise in new teacher jobs | 89.3 KPCC: