TeachNC is a new teacher recruitment initiative that aims to elevate the teaching profession and fill critical vacancies. The initiative employs a media campaign and a web platform to support candidates aiming to become teachers in North Carolina. The initiative is a partnership among BEST NC, the NC Department of Public Instruction and TEACH.org. TeachNC was officially launched at this week’s meeting of the North Carolina Education Cabinet.
TeachNC is designed to inspire teaching candidates to pursue a teaching career and remove barriers that stand in their way. The initiative aims to target middle school, high school and college students who are just beginning to think about their career options as well as mid-career professionals who may be considering a career change.
The media campaign, “Teachers Have Better Work Stories,” highlights the ways in which teaching profession is challenging, fulfilling, and constantly evolving. TeachNC will also be curating Better Work Stories from real North Carolina teachers.
TeachNC.org, the web platform, is designed to function as an interactive digital recruitment platform to centralize the information needed to become a teacher, including resources on licensure, educator preparation programs, financing teacher education, and applying. TeachNC plans to continue updating the web platform with pages on specific school districts, charter schools and educator preparation programs and licensure requirements changes. While the platform is currently focused on K-12, there are plans to build out information for preschool teachers in the future.
The TeachNC Director, Princess Brown, can be reached at Princess@TeachNC.org.
Creating a stronger pipeline of teachers, and particularly supporting teaching candidates of color, is prioritized in the Pathways to Grade-Level Reading Action Framework. The Action Framework outlines expectations for the state’s child and family serving systems and actions to support children’s social-emotional health, ensure high-quality birth-through-age-eight early learning environments and create the conditions for every child to be in school every day.
A successful teacher recruitment effort would support several of the actions recommended by the Pathways stakeholders, including:
Recruit and Retain Educators and School Leaders of Color. Develop a state plan to recruit and retain birth-through-age-eight educators and school leaders of color using a variety of strategies, including financial incentives, recruitment legislation, recruitment centers, pre-college programs, and alternative certification programs targeting substitute teachers and mid-career paraprofessionals.
Support Incentives to Ensure High Quality Educators in High Need Schools and Early Education Programs. Support incentives for effective teachers to stay in or move to disadvantaged, low-performing schools and early education programs. Survey high quality teachers and leaders currently working in high poverty schools and programs and look at national incentive-based programs to determine what type of financial compensation and other, non-monetary incentives may influence their decisions to move to or stay in high-need schools and early education programs.
Adjust Hiring Practices to Ensure High-Quality Educators. Examine hiring practices and other human resources policies and adjust as needed to ensure vacancies are filled with high quality educators. For example, in order to identify vacancies early and ensure that late hiring timelines are not a barrier to recruitment, provide a monetary incentive for early notification of resignation or retirement.
Pathways is an initiative of the NC Early Childhood Foundation in collaboration with NC Child, The North Carolina Partnership for Children, Inc., and BEST NC.