TEACHING JOBS NOT AS SCARCE AS WE HAVE BEEN MADE TO THINK

You’ve probably seen many headlines over the last year that have frightened educators as they hear about schools decreasing staff. Headlines like “Providence, RI pink slips ALL their teachers,” “CA sends out thousands of pink slips this year”; and “Green Country school districts cutting teacher positions”.  Educators are asking: Where are all the teaching jobs? What is the status of being an educator in the future?  

According to an article by Cheri Carlson, in The Ventura County Star, Calif. (MCT), “Baby boomers are retiring at increasing rates, and about a third of California teachers are older than 50 and likely will retire over the next 10 years, according to the report.”  Those teachers will need to be replaced.  Education Secretary, Arne Duncan is also quoted as saying “One of the greatest challenges facing our country is the coming retirement of more than 1 million baby-boomer teachers.” Cross-posted from the White House Blog.

Currently, enrollments are declining and budgets are extra tight, but this won’t last forever.  Just like anything else there are ebbs and flows in the area of education; enrollments go up and down and for several years people are screaming for less spending and other years, people are claiming their students aren’t getting enough services.

It is known that across the board there are difficulties filling positions in tough urban schools, as well as certain teaching positions like special education, speech pathology, hearing impaired, visually impaired and profound disabilities.  The 2010 Executive Summary of the Educator Supply and Demand Report, compiled by AAEE (American Association for Employment in Education) shows that “physics” is an area of teacher shortage, along with the Special Education positions listed above.  The teaching areas with the greatest surplus of teachers include elementary education, social studies, and physical education teachers.  That isn’t to say that those jobs aren’t out there, but teachers looking for those jobs will be competing with a larger pool of applicants.

The Executive Summary shows the top five areas of need in school districts are in speech pathology, teachers for the hearing impaired, teachers for the visually impaired, Physics teachers, and teachers for those with severe/profound disabilities.  Foreign Languages, like Japanese and German, are also in high demand.  .

The five areas of greatest surpluses overall are Elementary, Social Studies, Kindergarten, Physical Education, and Intermediate teachers.

According to the AAEE research, in 2010 approximately 38% of districts accepted applications from an on-line system that they bought or licensed from a company, 30% still accepted paper applications (mailed, faxed, or personally delivered), 20% accepted applications via email, 18% accepted applications through a district-build online system, 7% accepted applications through a state-built online system, and 6% through education service centers.

In an effort to reduce paper consumption, decrease costs, and increase efficiency, more districts are now accepting online applications.

SchoolSpring.com is presently listing almost 37,000 vacant education positions.

Give yourself a head start to find an education job: be willing to relocate; get a second license or certification in the high needs areas, make sure you are up-to-date with the latest technology and can show that you are ‘”tech-savvy,”’. Make sure your cover letter is job specific and addressed to the hiring manager, have a ‘”complete” resume and make sure there are no typos,. Network constantly (you never know – the person standing next to you in the bank, might be the principal of a school looking for a teacher like you!).

For more information on SchoolSpring call 1-888-546-3487 or contact Jim Fitzpatrick by email (jim@schoolspring.com).