Hiring Teachers :: Teaching Public Schools

Hiring Teachers Recruiting New Personnel Effectively Anyone interested in becoming a teacher? Please follow these basic procedures. First, you must go to the school board and picked up the teacher packet. It has to be filled out completely and turned in along with three references letters and all college transcripts. Secondly, you must set up an interview with a personnel person who will go over your qualifications and ask what grade or level you want to teach. Third, you must then set up an interview with the Personnel Director for elementary, middle, or high school. Fourth, you will receive a call to interview with the Principals at the schools that have openings for you. Fifth, you must wait until a principal calls and says that you have a position with them. Long and tedious would be the best words to describe this method of hiring personnel, yet, I know that even just four years ago these were the basic procedures that Duval County used for hiring teachers and other personnel. They did do some college fairs to attract attention and get a pool of people interested. I was hired through the local college fair, and the only step I was able to skip was step three. Other than college fairs there was no real recruitment that I am aware of, in my county. Many of these ancient ways of recruiting in modern times are not working. â€Å"The U.S. Department of Education has estimated that schools will need to hire more than two million teachers in the next decade† (Rodda, pg. 8) Not only will many teachers be retiring, but also many new teachers leave the field of education within the first five years for several reasons such as better money and better working conditions. How are schools to compete with the business world in recruiting qualified people who will teach and who will stay for the long haul? There are two schools in California who are using new methods to hopefully solve the problem to that question. Elk Grove is a district of 41,000 students outside of Sacramento. The first thing they have done is start recruiting â€Å"their own.† They are working with San Francisco State University’s Teacher Education Institute. By building a partnership the county is able to bring future teachers into the classroom and evaluate how they perform.