Our Terms & Conditions | Our Privacy Policy
George Washington High School recently hired two new teachers to fill critical vacancies in math and science that had been unfilled since the start of the school year.
The Mangilao school successfully recruited teachers for two positions: one for chemistry and marine biology, and one for geometry and algebra II.
Prior to these hires, GW High School faced shortages, leaving a good portion of their students’ teachers to teach these vital subjects.
GW High School Principal Dexter Fullo said a geometry teacher resigned just a week before the school year began.
“We were scrambling,” he said. “The job fair had already happened, and when you have a job fair, what oftentimes happens is the teachers can select which schools they want to apply for based on the interviews.”
With limited time, Fullo and his staff took action to support students in the meantime.
“One of the things we did was we made sure the lessons were aligned with what the kids were supposed to be learning,” Fullo said. “So we had the math teachers create the lesson plans, right? And then we use a computer program called Delta Math that all math teachers use in ways to assess where the students are at and what their weaknesses are. The school aid monitored to make sure the students were doing the work.”
Fullo said Delta Math helped pinpoint where students struggled, and other geometry and Algebra II teachers — who already have a full class of students in their own classes — worked with those students during certain periods and lunch breaks to provide additional support.
“That was the best that we could do with the resources that we had,” he said.
While the school struggled to fill math and science positions, efforts to recruit qualified teachers are ongoing.
“Math is one of the tough positions to find. Math, science, and special education – we were lacking for two positions, science and math,” he said. “After heavy recruitment, there were no candidates from UOG, so we had to meet with former teachers to see whether or not they were interested.”
Although there was an open math position, teacher shortages made it difficult to find qualified candidates.
“We kept trying to recruit. We’re working with UOG to try and get some. We have a student teacher, but they can’t teach a class yet,” the principal said. “We have a student teacher that we’re hoping to keep and transition here for the position.”
While the school awaited new hires, students received handouts and used Delta Math for assignments.
Fullo said they are unable to place all geometry students in the remaining geometry classes due to union contract restrictions.
“Teachers can’t exceed 28 students,” Fullo said. “When we exceed that, what happens is that they can file a grievance for violating the contract, so we got to make sure it’s within the means that we have, and that’s why we had to have that math class. Otherwise, we’d be looking at a class size of 37, 38, or 40 students.”
While the situation wasn’t ideal, it was the best solution available given the circumstances, he said.
“We tried our best. That was what we could do with the resources we had at the moment,” Fullo said. “We put the best substitutes we had that were skillful in working with the kids. Of course, they don’t necessarily have the degree, but we have them work with our math teachers that have the content knowledge.”
Teacher shortage, he said, is exacerbated by a declining student population, which makes managing teacher workload and resources especially difficult.
“We had teacher-student ratios as small as 10 to 1, which is good for us, but it’s bad for the department as a whole because you’ve got another school that has 35 to 1,” Fullo said. “It’s a painful process because the student population is down, but we have the same number of teachers. We have to make adjustments somewhere to make sure it fits within that.”
Fullo said there is a need for better efficiency in the hiring process.
“I think as a department, we need to do a better job of fine-tuning our hiring process,” he said. “There has to be a quicker, more efficient way to hire quicker, right? And I think the department is working towards that.”
[ad_1]
Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.
Aggregated From –
[ad_2]
Comments are closed.