Teacher recruitment: 120-plus high schoolers quiz college professors
UND’s face-to-face engagement between high school students, college professors could be key to filling teacher shortages
Associate Professor Chris Clark and Assistant Professor Tony Perry had their teacher recruitment technique down: Make it fun. Make it face to face. And make a day of it.
“Do you want to play?” Clark asked as he cast his line to a group of high school students slow-walking the pair’s table at the recent SEA OTRR Education Career Day hosted by UND’s College of Education & Human Development.
The students’ sudden rapt attention was proof they had taken the bait. Of course, they wanted to play.
“It’s just a little game to increase interest,” Clark explained to a snoopy bystander in the halls of the Education Building, now teeming with activity. “We give them a trivia question, and if they get it right, they get to pick a nice, brand-name piece of chocolate. If they get it wrong, they get the appropriate consolation prize: a Dum-Dums sucker.”
Hesitant smiles spread across the students’ faces. They were ready for their question.
“OK … what is the watchlike alien device that Ben 10 wears,” Clark begins to read from a worn Trivial Pursuit card before flipping it over. “Is it … a Vilgax, an Omnitrix or an Obelisk?”
The students laugh, look at one another and shrug their shoulders before asking Clark to repeat the question.
“I don’t even know if that was English,” Clark says with a chuckle. “I recognized like half of those words.”
“Omnitrix,” one of the students dares to blurt out.
The wild guess is correct, and the students collect their chocolate before hanging out for a more lengthy conversation.
Eventually, they’ll move on to the next table but not before grabbing a few brochures and getting some answers of their own about what it’s like to earn a teaching degree in Social Studies or Science at UND.
Genuine personalities keep it real
Scenes like this were repeated over and over again Oct. 9 as dozens of faculty members, graduate students and staff fielded one-on-one questions from the 120-plus North Dakota and Minnesota high school students who had come from 16 schools within a 90-mile radius to participate in the latest SEA OTRR event on the UND campus.
SEA OTRR, by the way, stands for See Education in Action with Outreach for Teacher Recruitment & Retention. The event gives students an up-close look at a wide array of education and education-adjacent programs.
“The great thing about SEA OTRR is that it brings high school students to campus not only to introduce them to our campus community but also to provide them an understanding of the sheer diversity of potential opportunities in the field of education,” Clark said. “They can do anything from being a physical education teacher (with a Kinesiology degree) to all sorts of other specializations in Early Childhood, Elementary, Middle and Secondary Education.”
Added Perry: “It’s an exciting chance for them to come to campus to experience what all we have to offer and to get a little taste of what it’s like to be a student at UND. This is the perfect way to get exposed and imagine a new future for themselves.”
Shrinking the national teacher shortage
The end goal, of course, is to shrink the nation’s critical PreK-12 teacher shortage — a shortage that has not politely skipped over the Midwest.
In fact, the Annenberg Institute at Brown University found in a recent study that there were 55,000 vacant full-time teaching positions across the country — 418 and 946, in North Dakota and Minnesota, respectively.
It’s for that reason North Dakota Superintendent of Public Instruction Kirsten Baesler lauded UND’s efforts to reverse that trajectory as she opened the day with a keynote address that was an inspirational call to duty.
“There’s never been a more important time to become a teacher in North Dakota,” Baesler told the crowd inside the Memorial Union. “Your passion, your talents and your creativity are desperately needed in our schools.
“Teachers are more than educators. They are mentors, they are role models and they are leaders. They are the foundation of our communities, the foundation of our state and the foundation of our nation.”
Baesler stressed that the state has an especially “urgent need” for teachers in special education, science, math, family and computer science, agriculture and early childhood.
“The educator shortages that we face are real, but they also are an opportunity for those of you in this room who are feeling called to make a difference,” she said. “Teaching is more than a job, more than a career — it’s a calling. It’s one of the most noble and impactful professions you can choose.
“Every day you will have the chance to change lives — and I’m not talking about changing lives 12 or 15 years from now. You will change lives every day, and you will see the difference that you make. You will inspire the next generation and be the role model our young people need. North Dakota needs you. Our schools need you. We need your passion, your energy and your belief in the power of education.”
Future teachers take lesson plans home
That passion was evident all across campus throughout the day as the students were escorted by mentors who are current education majors at UND. They toured Wilkerson Dining Center, Chester Fritz Library, Nistler College of Business & Public Administration and West Hall, where they were able to see a Living Learning Community in action.
Along the way, they flocked together and found new community as they stopped to build a giant “Hawk’s Nest” outside the Education Building. There, they were joined by members of the GRO.UND Learning Gardens and the Center for Engineering Education Research.
Lacey Anderson, graduate service assistant for the GRO.UND Learning Gardens, gestured to a poster as she explained how the activity was meant to highlight socio-emotional learning through “safety, belonging, family and trust” — attributes that teachers can incorporate in learning spaces both inside and outside the classroom.
As the high school students were encouraged to jot down a goal on a piece of muslin, tie it to a twig and help “feather” the nest, Giovanni Whyte, another graduate service assistant and GRO.UND fellow, shared some experiential lesson plans for counselors to take home to their high schools.
“As Grand Forks and America become more diverse, we want to find opportunities for students to see that they are part of the learning community,” Whyte said. “We want to build that sense of inclusiveness. We use the bird’s nest as our foundation, but for high schools, it’s mainly about engineering and getting these students to think critically about how they can design safe spaces.”
Taking first steps in teacher recruitment
Not every student ended the day with a “sure plan” for their college future, but educators say that’s OK, too.
“What this day does is put the plan in motion. It gets students to start thinking about how their high school classes are going to relate to the real world one day,” said Stephanie Larson of East Grand Forks Senior High’s Career Academy.
And this from Cara Davis, a career advisor with Red River High School in Grand Forks: “We always tell our students ‘You don’t know what you don’t know.’ If you came in undecided (about your major), maybe today exposes you to something you never thought about. Maybe you leave and think (the education field) isn’t for me, and that’s helpful information as well. Just come in with an open mind, and you’ll hopefully walk away with new information.”
UND Speech Language Pathology graduate students Bella Ipsen and KayLynn Campoverde said that’s exactly what happened to one young woman who spent time visiting with them.
“She was asking all these questions, and we were talking her through all these different situations, and she said, ‘This is making me rethink everything,’” Campoverde said.
“I told her, ‘That’s the point. That’s great.’ You don’t always know everything that’s out there, so you don’t want to limit yourself. It’s good to explore all your options and really put thought into what you want to do and why you want to do it. You need to find your passion.”
>> Do you know someone interested in a career in education? Tell them about the next SEA OTRR event set for Feb. 26. High school students are welcome to come to campus to preview the collegiate experience as education majors. For more information, reach Patricia Lopez at patricia.lopez@UND.edu, 701.777.6095, or Katie Stermer at katie.stermer@UND.edu, 701.777.3236.
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