Almost every summer, school systems across the state and country struggle to find new teachers.
As the 2022 school year started, Alabama had about 1,500 teaching positions that were unfilled. Special education had the most need with 474 open slots followed by 376 positions in middle and high schools. Elmore County Schools saw the need and brought in Emily Ryan to create the Teaching and Training program at Elmore County Technical Center three years ago.
“There is a severe shortage,” ECTC director Emilie Johnson said. “We are trying to prepare the next generation of teachers.”
Ryan had experience getting high school students started down the teaching path as she started a similar program in Lee County. But she saw something special at ECTC.
“I came here because the career tech support is just huge here,” Ryan said. “I wanted to be able to do more with my program.”
Ryan hopes to see the fruit of her program soon.
“It is an effort to recruit future teachers in high school,” Ryan said. “It hopefully will encourage them to come back to Elmore County.”
Ryan’s classes are filled with high school seniors, juniors and even sophomores at the same time. Although the curriculums are different, intermingling the age groups helps.
“It is really nice because the second and third years are here to help the first year students,” Ryan said. “They all work together to teach lessons. They help the others figure out the teaching world.”
The scenario mimics what a teacher does in a classroom. Ryan’s program teaches the students how to come up with lesson plans and even teach. Students even get a chance to teach in elementary classrooms to learn the trade.
“Instead of coming to my class, they go to what kind of teacher they want to be,” Ryan said. “They do a seven day job shadowing, then three days of actual teaching.”
The students are even in the classrooms before that. Many times they are just visiting but on holidays they help come up with crafts for the younger students.
“A big thing we work on is building repertoire,” Ryan said. “When they go in they start getting to know the kids. By the time they try to get the kids to do stuff, they want to do it for them.”
The high school students have seen the methods work. Wetumpka junior A’Mariiyah Crusoe is inspired to teach because of her mother. Crusoe recently finished an internship at Wetumpka Elementary.
“The kids were crying because I was leaving,” Crusoe said.
Likewise, Wetumpka senior Julia Zamora wants to be an elementary school teacher because younger children are so honest. She recently completed her internship as well and created a portfolio to present to judges in the FCCLA state competition where she was awarded a silver.
“The portfolio was of my experiences and how I went about making the lesson plan,” Zamora said. “It was also how I taught the lesson.”
Wetumpka senior Alyssa Tanner wants to teach high school math.
“It is easier to understand older kids,” Tanner said. “I can be myself around them because they understand my sarcasm.”
Ryan’s path to being a teacher wasn’t as clear as many of her students. She has been surrounded by educators her entire life. Both her parents taught and her husband is a teacher at Redland Middle School. But Ryan didn’t hop into teaching right away. She was working in retail instead.
“I was driving to work one day and God told me to be a teacher,” Ryan said. “I quit my job. Two weeks later I enrolled to be a teacher.”
Ryan is now helping students discover a love or hate of teaching before they get too far along the road. Ryan is fine with that. Part of her job is to encourage students to be teachers but also to help them figure out if teaching isn’t for them.
“It’s a win, win,” Ryan said. “It is better to find out now they don’t like teaching than to get the internship their senior year in college and figure out they don’t like it.”
