Last night I participated in a "teacher attraction and retention" project as part of parent council for Hillside Community School. All of the Parent Councils from the school district were invited to the library at Hillside and representatives from a few other schools were there. We were told by the consultant that there will be a spike in children starting school in the next 3-5 years and attracting and retaining new teachers will be even more important than it currently is. We started by choosing a photo out of several that the consultant set out on the table, the photo that best described what teachers meant to us. Then we listed the positive and negative aspects of the profession, finally we talked about how we could solve the problem.
What can we do to attract teachers to Grande Prairie and keep them here? More importantly- and what I find to be the real issue- how do we attract more people to the profession? I suggested that if education were properly funded more kids would consider a career in teaching. Its one of the toughest jobs and we constantly ask them to do more with less. We need to support education and make it a top priority.
If you've never participated in this kind of project and ever have the opportunity I highly recommend it. Was it a success in the sense that the consultant got the answers he required? I dont know, but it made us think about our teachers and what we can do as parents to support them.
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