teacher recruitment & retention

What Could We Do?
JUNE 1999

 

In order to recruit new foreign language teachers…

• We must identify and encourage tomorrow’s foreign language teachers first from within the profession. This encouragement must come early, within our foreign language classrooms, and draw upon our present and expanding student population.
  
• Foreign language teacher must collaborate with areas beyond our traditional academic borders and seek the expertise of those who have experience in the field of teacher recruitment. We must acquire knowledge and strategies designed to achieve our collective professional goals.
  
• Foreign language teachers must unite with influential forces outside the educational domain. We must work with parents, policy-makers, corporate leaders, and members of the general public to begin to address the shortage. We need to find innovative ways of broadening the traditional pathways foreign language teaching as a career. Appropriate financial incentives could be provided to relieve the crisis.
  

Within the educational domain, we could…

• Endow programs, fund campaigns, and create scholarships for future foreign language teachers.
  
• Promote the offering of foreign languages for all students in the community including parents, politicians, school board members, students, and voters.
  
• Educate the education field about the existing standards in foreign language education and the potential of the foreign language field to provide a pluralistic vision in educating future world citizens.
  
• Educate students K-16 about the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards of foreign language teaching and the pedagogical profession.
  
• Identify immersion and early-start programs and encourage them to partner with each other and other pre-K-16+ programs in recruiting efforts.
  
• Identify and publicize successful results in recruiting teachers.
  
• Support future-teacher groups and initiatives, using models of already-established programs.
  
• Establish after-school and in-school programs, summer camps, internships, and apprenticeships for future foreign language teachers.
  
• Identify individuals who are training for multi-disciplinary teaching positions to continue foreign language training and earn an additional specialization or licensure/certification in a foreign language.
  
• In the short term, utilize existing international collaborations to bring foreign language teachers to the United States from their native countries.
  

Beyond the educational domain, we could:

• Support and encourage public and governmental funding to affirm quality foreign language teaching and enhance the professional stature of educators.
  
• Develop a strong and sustained public awareness campaign that promotes our profession’s goals to the society at large.
  
• Educate external civic groups and community organizations about the immediacy of the foreign language teacher shortage and its impact on foreign language programs in the United States and society as a whole.
  
• Reformulate teacher preparation and professional development programs for teachers and alternative-path teacher candidates, so that they meet high standards that assure that graduates possess essential skills.
  
• Research the factors that impact the attrition rate for foreign language teachers leaving the classroom and seek ways to address these factors.