Schools under stress: New teachers enticed to districts with strong community and supports

When Elena Register moved to New Hampshire from Hoover, Alabama, four years ago to study elementary education at Plymouth State University, she was looking for a change from her huge southern school district, with class sizes of 30 students and hundreds per grade.

In the year she spent student-teaching alongside a mentor at Bridgewater-Hebron Village School near Newfound Lake in Bristol, she enjoyed the way the small class sizes created tight-knit communities and decided she wanted to stay and work in New Hampshire after graduation.

“Teachers all know each other,” said Register. “You know who’s going to be in your class already. There’s a lot less icebreakers going on and a lot more intentional teaching and intentional community-building, which is what drew me to stay and get my license here.”

But in the spring, as Register began to apply for teaching jobs, the issue of finding housing in the Granite State as a 22-year-old college grad became daunting. As a new teacher who wakes up at 6 a.m. for work, she felt she had “moved beyond” the student apartments near Plymouth, where residents are often noisy until 2 a.m. But with the statewide housing shortage, Register was unsure about her options.

When she heard about a new Plymouth State University graduate program that places aspiring special education teachers in the Littleton School District with a $1,000 per month stipend and free local housing, she realized it was the opportunity she was looking for.

“Littleton was very much like, ‘We’ll set this up for you, we have this available to you, come and see it before you decide or make your mind up,’ and that was a very big draw,” Register said.

Starting this school year, Register is one of six students studying and teaching special education in the inaugural Graduate Residency Program in Littleton. The students will spend four days a week in the Littleton School District, team-teaching alongside an experienced teacher, with a fifth day for coursework. The program’s goal is twofold: to provide student teachers with hands-on learning opportunities and to provide the school district with personnel amid a statewide struggle to attract and retain teachers.

“They wanted to make sure they had people to staff those positions and it’s challenging now, with housing prices what they are and gas prices what they are, to recruit people to an area with a higher cost of living,” said Beth Fornauf, assistant professor of special education at Plymouth State who is coordinating the program. “I think that the housing opportunity that came with this program was really helpful for people who are interested because it definitely minimized that barrier for them.”

This is one example of a pilot program aimed at placing teachers where they’re needed to combat a looming shortfall of teachers in certain districts, especially small, rural, low-income districts. Those involved say programs like these could offer the key to solving educator shortages statewide.

Addressing a problem

Data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Title II state reports show a steady decline in the number of students completing teacher prep programs in New Hampshire, from a high of 1,153 in the 2006-2007 school year to just 580 in the 2019-2020 school year. It’s just one of many factors contributing to the issues some New Hampshire schools – mainly in rural and low-income areas – are facing with staffing and hiring.

Around New Hampshire, some universities have programs aimed at getting teachers to regions of the state where they’re needed most. The programs are residency-based (the students live in the school community) and offer incentives to the students (funding, housing, hands-on learning experience or the promise of a job after graduation) in exchange for their work in the school.

Unlike other professions like food service workers and healthcare workers that saw unprecedented turnover during the pandemic – often called the Great Resignation – education officials say schools were spared from massive waves of teachers quitting. The challenge has been finding enough candidates to fill the positions generated by routine turnover.

On Wednesday, Aug. 31, a new legislative committee will meet for the first time to study New Hampshire’s teacher shortages and recruitment incentives. Gov. Chris Sununu signed the bill to establish the study committee in June, before the end of the last school year. The goal of the committee is to identify strategies for attracting more qualified teaching candidates to the state, with special emphasis on underrepresented minorities and rural school districts.

Sen. Jay Kahn, who sponsored the bill seeking to establish the committee, said in February that he hoped it would be an opportunity for New Hampshire to find solutions to its extensive critical shortage list, a goal that other states are already pursuing.

“The contacts I’ve had with other states cued me in to how aggressively they were approaching the question of future teacher shortages,” said Kahn, who once served as the interim president of Keene State College. “We’re late to the starting gate initiating a more aggressive strategy to fill teacher vacancies in New Hampshire.”

The committee has appointed six members: Reps. Rick Ladd, Mel Myler and Oliver Ford, Sens. Ruth Ward and Kahn, and Steve Appleby from the state’s Division of Educator Support and Higher Education.

Starting the support early

Experts say the first three years are key to retaining new teachers and keeping them in the profession.

“They need support in terms of that transition to go from co-teaching with this really experienced person to all of a sudden, boom, they are the adult in charge of everything,” said Leslie Couse, education professor at the University of New Hampshire. “Classroom teachers have a lot of responsibility for many children for the entire day. That can be a challenge for new teachers. ‘How do I navigate all of these expectations as I’m still learning?’ ”

Couse is the director of UNH’s Teacher Residency for Rural Education program, which ran from 2017 to 2021 with a federal grant. Students in the program were placed in rural high-need schools around the state to co-teach for a year while also completing coursework, working toward a Master’s degree in education. After the residency, graduates committed to teaching in one of the schools for at least three years.

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Residency is a key part of these types of programs, allowing student teachers to integrate with and understand the community.

Plymouth’s North Country Teacher Certification Program is a partnership with White Mountains Community College, where students alternate coursework and student teaching in schools in Coos County and northern Grafton County, working toward a bachelor’s degree and K-8 teacher certification. Program director Brian Walker says it’s intended to be a “grow-your-own” initiative, making it economically and logistically possible for aspiring teachers already living in the northern part of the state to study and enter the profession without having to relocate.

“What it’s done is created qualified applicants to work throughout Coos County,” Walker said. “They are learning and teaching from educational leaders... who know the North Country really well, and who can support our students as they’re helping prepare them, not just to become an educator, but the uniqueness of working in the North Country.”

The programs are small. The Littleton program has six students per year, while Plymouth’s North Country program has averaged about the same in recent years. UNH’s rural education residency program had 35 participants over a period of four years.

But they have a good success rate. Couse said 100% of the 35 UNH participants were hired after graduation and are working in rural New Hampshire schools. Walker said 30 of the 34 Plymouth participants who have graduated since 2016 are currently working in northern New Hampshire schools.

“In small school districts, even adding two or three can be a critical number when population is low and there aren’t necessarily other industries that are bringing teachers to rural communities,” Couse said.

Addressing the shortage list

The New Hampshire Department of Education has also implemented initiatives to encourage more teachers to enter critical shortage fields. Under one such initiative, working in a job that is considered a critical shortage area lessens the requirements needed for an aspiring educator to get an intern authorization to work in a school, explained Steve Appleby, director of the state’s Division of Educator Support and Higher Education.

For example, an aspiring chemistry teacher may be required to take eight or 10 courses or major in chemistry to be granted a chemistry endorsement under normal circumstances, Appleby said, but if chemistry is on the critical shortage list an aspiring teacher can get an intern authorization to work, while also taking a couple of classes and completing some alternative requirements. This offers a pathway for mid-career adults to easily start teaching their area of expertise.

“It allows the districts flexibility in hiring,” Appleby said, “So they can take a candidate who they feel would be wonderful in the classroom who may not have the qualifications, obtain an intern authorization, and they can gain these skills through mentorship.”

Almost every New Hampshire school district takes advantage of this licensing shortcut, according to Appleby, who estimates that about 1,200 of the Department’s 28,000 credentialed educators are on an intern authorization.

Franklin is one school district that uses student teachers on intern authorizations to supplement their staff in the buildings.

“We get to have students who bring in new ideas and new ways of doing things,” said Superintendent Dan LeGallo. “It’s a win-win for both the colleges and the schools to have those teachers available to come down and support our kids.”

Other programs seeking to mitigate the shortage by offering teachers financial incentives for staying. The University of New Hampshire offers federally-funded TEACH grants of $4,000 a year to graduates who teach a high-need subject in a low-income school. The New Hampshire Charitable Foundation awards the Louise Tillotson Teaching Fellowship, which provides a $10,000 to $15,000 grant to three teachers working in North Country region every year.

Couse believes that the lessons learned from pilot programs like UNH’s Residency for Rural Education can be applied elsewhere in the state and that the Littleton Program is a living example of that.

“If we’re gonna solve the teacher shortage, we really need to be thinking creatively and providing access,” Couse said. “Really thinking about ‘how do we harness the resources we have here in New Hampshire, and other resources around and create different pathways?’ ”

In the Littleton School District, Register’s first day of school was Monday. She was placed in third-grade special education at Mildred Lakeway Elementary.

“I do see myself staying in New Hampshire for at least a handful of years just to get the full experience,” Register said. “Because it’s an entirely different system from Exeter and Nashua all the way up to Littleton and beyond. There’s a lot of diversity within just one state where my license is.”

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These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.