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\\u201cWe have found through research that the majority of states are recording a significant shortage in family and consumer sciences teachers to be able to fill the void within the classroom.\\u201d\\xa0

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Dr. Carol Werhan (7:05-7:18)

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Dr. Carol Werhan and Alyson McIntyre-Reiger are both former family and consumer sciences teachers who are now passionately doing all they can with the FCCLA to help put an end to the national teacher shortage, specifically with FCS educators. Where is this shortage coming from?\\xa0

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Carol started research a few years ago to identify where the teacher shortages are, and also determine ways to increase the number of students going into secondary education and working on recruiting. Even though there\\u2019s a shortage of educators, there doesn\\u2019t seem to be a shortage in interest of students enrolling in family and consumer sciences courses. What does Carol think is at the root of our teacher shortage? For one, in the United States, there\\u2019s a downplay of respect for the teaching profession across the board, whether we\\u2019re talking about pay rate, respect or classroom size. This is a vast contrast to 50 or more years ago when parents used to encourage kids to go into teaching and educating as a highly respected career.\\xa0

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There\\u2019s also a misperception of how available the job is. Carol regularly meets with students at Purdue University who are interested in \\u201cpeople-centric\\u201d sciences, like being a family and consumer sciences teacher, but they usually have the assumption that there aren\\u2019t any jobs. In actuality, plenty of students are getting jobs as a family and consumer sciences educator months before they graduate college. On that same note, just within the past two months, Alyson has even seen seven different programs looking to hire a new teacher\\u2026 not a teacher to replace someone that has left or retired, a new staff member because of growth of their program.

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\\u201cWe know from career exploration that sometimes people don\\u2019t make a career choice because they don\\u2019t know anything about it.\\u201d Dr. Carol Werhan (18:20-18:27)

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If there\\u2019s such great interest from students, why is there a shortage? For one, underserved schools are struggling to get educators in the door. Unlike the 1950\\u2019s-1980\\u2019s when graduates would go to where the jobs are, students now have the availability to locate a job wherever they want to go. Carol says most students like to go back and teach in the area where they grew up.\\xa0\\xa0

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There is an opportunity for underserved or rural communities to take a \\u201cgrow your own\\u201d approach to finding educators. Some schools are agreeing to give high school graduates the first rights to a job when they finish college. In Indiana, for example, there\\u2019s a scholarship program from the Commission for Higher Education that will help pay the tuition for students who are interested in teaching as long as the student agrees to teach for five years.

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Did you know there are only around 3.2 million teachers available to serve 98,000 of the public schools in the United States?

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Alyson has played a huge role in a grant through the USDA which was inspired by the teacher shortage, especially in the Northeast/New England area of the United States, which is lacking teacher preparation programs. The USDA instigated the grant after seeing a shortage of family and consumer sciences educators as a way to try and recruit, prepare and support new educators.

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How are colleges trying to support the preparation of family and consumer sciences educators? Colleges like Purdue and most states have programs that help someone transition their degree from, for example, nutrition or child development, into family and consumer sciences. If someone is interested and has an overlapping or similar background, these programs will support them in that transition.

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\\u201cYou can be your industry\\u2019s number one recruiter just by the way you carry yourself.\\u201d Lori Taylor (24:56-25:00)

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Become a Teacher Day is a yearly event held in Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis where 32 universities are able to come and set up booths to inform and recruit students about a career path as a teacher. Just this last year Become a Teacher Day had its biggest year yet by putting 650 students into the pathway of teaching. The focus is kept on sharing with students what they need to know about entering the education field. College students also attend to share their insights on what the journey is light, set expectations and paint the picture of what it is like in and out of the classroom.\\xa0

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Instead of having to visit colleges individually, students get access and information to 32 different programs, helping universities get in front of the students they want to target and helping students shorten the timeline of deciding to become an FCS teacher. Carol also says they try to encourage current FCS teachers at the middle or high school level to talk about why being a family and consumer sciences educator is a great career. She hears many students talk about how they want to be like their FCS teacher and have that same passion, so having teachers share in detail acts as a seed planting recruitment mechanism.

How to get involved

• Join The Produce Moms Group on Facebook and continue the discussion every week!\\xa0
• Reach out to us - we\\u2019d love to hear more about where you are in life and business! Find out more here.\\xa0

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