ABCTE Teachers

I would urge you to go to the Meet our Teachers section of our website. It is really quite incredible and the reason we exist. Here you will learn about Angela Moore who worked in the military and other careers before finding teaching as her calling. With her spouse in the military, it was tough for her to complete any teacher preparation program that did not have an independent study option. With ABCTE sh was able to teach. With our scholarship program, she could do it now.

Mississippi has a very difficult time finding teachers. The fact that we were able to recruit people like Angela to teach in Mississippi high schools is incredibly rewarding and the reason we all work so hard to get other states to accept our teachers.

Teach & Inspire

Recruiting teachers is not an easy task as any principal can tell you. But there are a lot of people out there that want to teach. In April 2007, the Tarrance Group conducted a survey of Florida residents and found that 28% wanted to teach at some point in their lives.

This month we started the Teach & Inspire scholarship program. It does confirm that there are many out there who want to teach. We had information sessions in Mississippi and Florida in January and had over 2,500 people attend those sessions. Of those, over 440 applied to be in the program. We have now sent out acceptance notices to 197.

To read the essays of these potential teachers is truly inspiring. They have come to a point in their lives where they know that they want to teach and they just need someone to help them get there.

“I want the children in my community to know that it is not about where you come from, it is about where you end up.”--Sundra Jefferson, Teach & Inspire participant

“Educators are here to help those that are falling by the wayside rise and achieve. Not only do I feel obligated to help these school districts, but I feel that it is my constitutional obligation as well.”--Christy Isom, Teach & Inspire participant

Through a Transition to Teaching grant, we will help place these great people with this incredible desire to teach into high needs schools teaching math, science, English and special education.

Amazing what can happen when politics get pushed aside in favor of real actions.

A GREAT week for education improvement

The "good weeks" in education improvement really keep you going. This week was certainly one of those weeks here. We had our 750th certification!! She is a health care professional from North Carolina who is moving to South Carolina to teach science. See what happens when you have the right program to attract career changers NC – you get the teachers you need!! (or if you don't, you lose a great science teacher)

Teach and Inspire – our scholarship program to recruit more teachers of color has had over 250 people attend information sessions in Florida in the last two days! Our very lofty goal is to recruit 350 science and math teachers of color for high needs schools - - we are well on our way right now.

Our charter school teacher recruitment event was amazing – we had 50 potential teachers come out last night in Tucson and have double that signed up for Phoenix on Saturday. Looks like that is going to work out well and we can expand that to other charter schools in the upcoming months.

And I testified in Florida about our Distinguished Teacher program – a lot of interest in this right now as state leaders struggle to find good performance pay programs.

Nothing like a great week in education improvement to keep you coming back for more!