Each year, an unacceptably low number of top college graduates are recruited into the teaching profession. With over half of the current teacher workforce set to retire within the next decade, the effects of stagnant recruitment are set to compound.

In Fall of 2013, the Kinetic Teacher Recruitment team began designing a program to help boost the number and quality of college students that become teachers. We based our strategy on extensive research of other well-recognized and alluring professional recruitment programs (law, medicine, etc.) and the aspects that make these popular and competitive career paths. We wanted teaching to have similar clout, and attract the most intelligent, most creative, and hardest working graduates.

Our group has chosen to focus on preparing undergraduate students with an interest in teaching for enrollment in teacher residency programs. Residency programs are competitive, professional programs that offer intensive pedagogical and practical training. The uniqueness of the residency model consistently draws the highest quality graduates, but students who would be well suited to teaching are frequently unaware of the opportunity or unprepared for these competitive preparatory programs.

We have reached out to prominent local teacher residency organizations, and plan to use these partnership to develop a combination of curriculum and fieldwork opportunities at the undergraduate level that prepare students for rigorous residency programs and provide them with experience with teaching before entering graduate school. By providing a clear path for top tier graduates to enter the teaching profession, we can secure a stable, high quality teacher workforce for years to come.