School districts across Kentucky are looking for teachers to help fill their ranks. The teacher shortage has been a problem in Kentucky for some time now and Eastern Kentucky University is trying to help students connect with schools who need teachers.
Districts from across the commonwealth sent representatives to EKU for a teacher recruitment fair on Monday. Stacey Korson is the director of Professional Educational Services in the College of Education and Applied Human Sciences at EKU. How current teachers are treated, she said, could be part of the reason for the shortage.
“People who choose to go into education do this because this as, they have a calling, a calling to teach, whether it’s as a professor at a university or a K12 education. I think the biggest challenge is the conversation about educators and the professionalism of educators, are they being treated and viewed as professionals?”
She said the university is working to help alleviate the teacher shortage, but the signs are still there.
“Our numbers are down, there’s a teacher shortage for a reason and our institution is no different in seeing those numbers down. We have seen an increase in our MAT, I believe we had over 50 new MAT students this past fall. While our numbers in the traditional program are down slightly, numbers in some of the other options are increasing.”
Korson said the MAT, or Master of Arts in Teaching at EKU can be done completely online. She says the university currently has 90 graduates in their student teaching semester.
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