Tips for CTE teacher recruitment

[read_meter]

As more schools look to add career and technical education (CTE) courses and programming many school administrators are interested in CTE teacher recruitment. To help ensure that you can get the instructors you need we will explore options and considerations. To start we will first look at some top considerations that can effect the recruitment of CTE teachers.

Top considerations for CTE teacher recruitment and retention

Before discussing CTE teacher recruitment and retention options, consider several situational factors.

Technical training takes time

First and foremost, technical training and development takes time. Generally 2-4 year to become proficient in the most valuable tech skills in vocational careers. With that said, there is a common perception that tech training can be done in a simple teacher externship or introductory course. Ensure you appropriately build effective training programs for your teachers.

Lack of class administration and support

Career and technical teachers are an invaluable resource and should focus their time on the most critical aspects of delivering a course.

However, many schools lack effective support systems for tasks like registration and course administration. So to maximize efficiency and effectiveness, you must delegate tasks to the appropriate resources, ensuring that everyone focuses on the responsibilities that align with their expertise.

Balance teacher skill with curriculum

Just strong curriculum or the best teacher cannot accomplish the effectivity of a course for students. It is a balance between both of these items, as well as others such as the technical work environment. Make sure to consider this in the overall approach to your CTE programs.

Lack of defined development phases

Many schools do not have defined technical development phases in their overall CTE framework. Definition of these phases is the best way to understand the technical levels of students within courses. As a result, without them you will probably not apply the appropriate curriculum and teaching levels for a course. From a teaching perspective, this means either too high level a teacher or a teacher is not skilled enough for the development phase.

Teacher shortages impact CTE teacher recruitment

In general, in the United States there is a shortage of CTE teachers. Some of the reasons include work force aging and teachers leaving to the private sector. The teaching profession is also being effected by this leading to a smaller pool of available teachers. This simply puts more pressure on you as a school administrator to come up with creative solutions for our students.

Opportunity costs for CTE teachers

As effective CTE teachers become more proficient in career domains, they also become more valuable to the private sector. This will make CTE teacher recruitment more competitive for sure. You need to look at models that can let them capitalize on their value while still keeping them interested in the value they get from teaching. The most common options for this are part-time models where they can do both.

Options for CTE teacher recruitment

There are a couple of options for recruiting great teachers for any CTE program. So here are the most common options for CTE teacher recruitment.

• Hire new CTE teachers
• Train existing CTE teachers
• Outsource CTE teaching responsibilities
• Pilot new models

Hire new CTE teachers

Hiring new career and technical education teachers and overall CTE teacher recruitment can be a bit daunting because there is a shortage of available teachers in general and a lot of competition. However this is possible. In this model you will look to bring in and hire new teaching talent for your program. This can be done in a full-time or part-time model.

• Full-time model – You will look to bring in a full-time resource to help teach CTE courses.
• Part time hires – In this model, you will work with having CTE teachers in a part-time capacity. So this can be to teach one course or a series of them.

Train existing CTE teachers

In this option for CTE teacher recruitment you will look to develop and then develop existing teachers into CTE teachers.

• Send teachers to career and technical training. In this model you can send them to a specific program or work with them to develop their own training and development plans.
• Teacher externships. Teacher externships are often short duration experiential training opportunities for teachers. Also, these can be helpful in introducing concepts for teachers.
• Work based learning. The best way to learn proficiency in a career area is to actually train and then work in that discipline and perform tasks. So in this model you will work with employers for realistic based opportunities for your teachers.
• CTE Teacher apprenticeship. There are formal CTE instructor related teacher training and work apprenticeships that present on the job training.

Outsource CTE teaching responsibilities

In this option for CTE teacher recruitment, you can work with an external consultant or firm to teach a specific CTE course or program. This may include just the teacher or instead all of the primary parts of the course from registration to teaching and support.

Pilot new models for CTE recruitment

Since the classical solutions are not always working to find more teachers, new models might be a strong next step. We are running a program to transition soccer coaches into CTE teachers that is such a program.

Recommendations for CTE teacher recruitment

Below are some recommendations to best support CTE recruitment options for you.

• Update your overall CTE framework so it best attracts teaching talent

• Reduce credentialing requirements where possible during CTE teacher recruitment

• Ensure appropriate support and administration for CTE courses to best use teachers time
• Recognize it will take time to train existing staff in CTE
• Get the right teacher for the phase of development of the course and students in it
• Be open to new and experimental programs and approaches to this issue
• Balance the right teacher with the right curriculum and work environment.

Next steps for CTE teacher recruitment.

Learn more about CTE development frameworks and how they might be adjusted to meet your CTE teacher recruitment needs. Please contact us with any questions about finding and recruiting CTE teachers.