If you’ve found it challenging to find substitute teachers or fill teacher vacancies, you are not alone. There just aren’t enough teachers to fill classrooms, and that’s a huge problem for schools and communities. With the harsh realities of supply and demand, the temptation to act fast and take shortcuts when hiring staff is palpable, particularly when competing with neighboring districts facing similar situations. Fortunately, the NY Department of Labor’s recognition of “Teacher” as an apprenticeship title allows districts to use Registered Apprenticeship Programs (RAPs) to invest wisely for both short and long-term teacher workforce stability and success.

Investing in something as important as student learning requires a thoughtful, measured response. As we learned in childhood from the tortoise and the hare, slow and steady wins the race. Long-term success just can’t be rushed. It is attained with a creative, steady strategy rather than with panicked speed. When considering how best to approach the current teacher crisis, we must ask ourselves:

●      What is driving this predicament?, and

●      What needs to be done to reverse course?

These are not easy questions, and NY schools are not alone in grappling with them. In some cases, like the speedy hare, states have opted to quickly reduce, or even eliminate, certification requirements needed for individuals to enter classrooms as teachers. While such shortcuts may serve to rapidly recruit and hire individuals, ill-preparedness usually leads to fast burns and attrition. The resulting “churn” burdens the system, hurting students and the school community. These types of quick solutions also pose long-term risks to districts in school culture, student success, and community support. So how do we break or prevent this cycle? Another hard question. 

By being the tortoise and investing in the long game, we plan and work to access, develop, and retain strong talent through RAPs. Partnering with IHE programs to embed coursework, we pay candidates while they learn their craft working alongside an experienced educator. Educators know from best practices that learning made real by experience is the most impactful. A paid Apprenticeship model has been a successful mainstay for the workforce development community for centuries, so let’s follow and implement these best practices across systems with future educators. Let’s adopt a slower, yet steady response that leverages learning through lived experience. In other words, let’s slow down and take the time to invest in a long-range, high-quality solution to the teacher workforce crisis through Registered Apprenticeship Programs.