Jess Haus discovered her love of teaching at age 5, imparting lessons to a gaggle of stuffed animals and to her mother, Lisa, who made up the student body of a charming make-believe classroom.
“I always gave mom the extra-hard assigments,” said Haus, whose passion for teaching has only grown in the decade since.
Now, as she studies teacher education at Lehigh Career & Technical Institute, the East Penn School District sophomore from Emmaus finds herself part of a vital mission: heading off the implosion of the teaching profession in Pennsylvania.
It’s a growing threat, experts say: Since 2010, the number of teachers certified annually in Pennsylvania has plunged from 20,000 to fewer than 7,000. Currently there are about 2,100 vacancies statewide, while some 6,500 teachers are working with emergency certificates as districts try to plug the holes.
The shortage has nibbled at Lehigh Valley districts but not yet taken a deep bite. Still, the trend promises to worsen.
Eager to reverse it, the Pennsylvania State Education Association is in its second year of coordinating Educators Rising, a program of study and other resources that encourages high school and college students to explore the profession.
The Educators Rising curriculum is the basis of teacher education classes at LCTI, where instructor Kathy Khanuja is leading high school students from districts around the county through lessons that stretch far beyond the essentials of the profession.
In public schools, societal problems and pressures are often reflected in the microcosm of the classroom, so the future teachers learn lessons in social and emotional safety, cultural differences and forms of bias, among many other things.
Then there are practical matters: how to set up a classroom, how to plan a school day, how to conduct effective assessments.
None of this imposing slate of responsibilities has dampened the enthusiasm of the half-dozen students in Khanuja’s morning class — most of whom, like Haus, played teacher as a child.
They have other things in common. One, especially prevalent among students drawn to teach early grades, is the instinct to nurture and protect children.
“I feel the need to help them,” said Monin Vega, a 17-year-old senior in the Allentown School District whose ambition to work in day care grew into the desire to teach as she encountered more children over time.
“When I would watch my little nieces and nephews it would be like, I really enjoy this,” she said. “When I would go to a playground I would want to watch over the kids. I realized I would want to do it for the rest of my life, taking care of kids and helping them learn.”
The other common thread? Encounters with teachers whose personalities, classroom methods and attentiveness to individual students made the profession seem irresistible.
“It’s absolutely essential to to take time to build relationships with students,” said Khanuja, a longtime public school English teacher. In doing so, she said, the best teachers can help students grasp and excel at subjects that might otherwise be lost on them.
Observers cite many reasons for the dwindling ranks of teachers: stagnant wages, competitive pay in other fields and, increasingly, politics. Educators — meaning teachers and administrators alike — are increasingly targeted with heated rhetoric over diversity curriculums and the age-appropriateness of some texts and library books.
The stress of the COVID-19 pandemic also took a toll, with teachers often blamed for the extended closure of schools and the consequent developmental delays of students.
Some factors in the teacher decline can be blamed on the economy, others on the pendulum of public opinion. For Khanuja, drawing students to the profession through so-called “grow-your-own” teaching programs are among the best ways to reverse it.
“This is so exciting for me,” she said. “The future is in this room.”
That future, if all bears out, will give Pennsylvania an eager complement of K-12 teachers ready to fill the gaps.
“I love history and I love sharing facts with my friends,” said Breonna Richardson, a Northwestern Lehigh School District junior looking to parlay those passions into a career as a high school history teacher.
Another aim of LCTI’s program and others like it is to diversify the ranks of teachers.
“It’s still a predominantly female profession and a predominantly Caucasian one,” Khanuja said. “One of our goals is to change that. We want to be able to reach out to a more diverse population.”
Morning Call reporter Daniel Patrick Sheehan can be reached at 610-820-6598 or [email protected]
