CHANDLER, AZ — As the 2023-2024 school year begins, Arizona and many other states continue to face massive teacher shortages.
The most recent numbers from the Arizona School Personnel Administrators Association show our state is short roughly 2,900 teachers as we head into a new year.
The Chandler Unified School District is one of the lucky ones that only have a handful of openings to start the new year, but the district is also finding creative ways to attract and retain teachers in hopes of avoiding the shortage altogether.
"I've always wanted to be a teacher," explains first-year teacher Nkiruka Aningo. "You can ask my family. Since the first day of pre-school, I said, 'I'm going to be like that!'"
Talk about a full circle moment for Aningo, who begins her first year as a fifth-grade teacher at Andersen Elementary this week.
"It's a little surreal," she explains. "I feel like I've been a student for so long…now that I'm becoming the teacher, it's like a different world. But I'm excited. Nervous, but excited!"
But what puts Aningo at ease is the fact that she is a familiar face around the district; she spent her last year at Arizona State University student-teaching at Chandler Unified, but she wasn't just earning real-life classroom experience — she was also earning a paycheck!
"They basically treated me like a real teacher, which helped me in my student-teacher journey because I had a lot of independence so they let me basically anything a real teacher would do."
"It was a very successful program," explains Kathleen Jett, Chandler Unified's Director of Talent Management, who says more than a dozen of the paid student-teachers that were part of their pilot program this past year are now working in the district as full-time teachers.
Jett says the goal is to create a "teacher pipeline" to help fill gaps within the district.
"We worked really hard to nurture these students. And we work with these school sites to see what their strengths are and what we can do to support them in the areas they need support in."
Jett is not only head of hiring but also head of retaining these teachers. It's a job that's only gotten more challenging over the years as fewer people enter the field.
"Being a teacher is a noble profession and it's a difficult profession," she explains. "For a lot of these kids, these teachers are mentors, they are a parent, they can be a nurse, counselor -- so the role of a teacher has expanded incredibly what we look at years ago."
Chandler’s RISE program aims to ‘grow’ new teachers
Chandler Unified is Arizona's second-largest school district with roughly 2,700 hundred teachers across about 50 schools and programs.
This year, the district hired 300 new teachers, which is pretty standard for a district of this size, but one thing that is different is a new program that's helping Chandler "grow" their own teachers.
It's called "Chandler RISE" - a two-year program that's open to anyone with a Bachelor's degree. The idea is to attract people who'd like to enter the teaching field, but may have majored in something else and don't have all the experience and certifications necessary to be inside an Arizona classroom.
Those two years include valuable classroom experience, coaching and mentoring from certified teachers, and more than 200 hours of professional development, enrichment, and skills training.
Teachers in the RISE program are also paid — more than $54,000, which is what a starting teacher in the district would make. RISE teachers are also eligible for other benefits like health insurance, retirement plans, and paid time off.
"It's at no cost to them," explains Jett. "It's something the district is doing to grow their own, so we are super excited about it."
This year, there are more than two dozen of these RISE teachers with hopes of expanding the program next school year.