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Sayed Taha at NHPS career fair: “Students here also need a lot of help, love and support, and I hope I can give them that as a teacher.”
After teaching English in his home country of Afghanistan as recently as nine months ago, new New Haven resident Sayed Taha hopes to pick his educator career back up as a New Haven Public Schools teacher.
Taha was one of roughly 150 interested candidates to pursue that potential job opportunity at the district’s career fair — all as he continues to work with NHPS on moving up from his current role as a Hillhouse tutor by first receiving his teacher certification.
Taha attended that public-school recruitment fair Tuesday evening at the Floyd Little Athletic Center at 480 Sherman Pkwy. The district hosted the hiring effort as it struggles with a citywide teacher shortage and looks to fill nearly 200 vacant NHPS positions.
“Since I finished my own degree in English Literature, I have been teaching English to Afghani students,” Taha said on Tuesday. “Students here also need a lot of help, love and support, and I hope I can give them that as a teacher.” That’s why he’s now working towards his teacher certification, which can take up to two years to complete in Connecticut.
Organized by Sarah Diggs, the district’s coordinator of Recruitment & Retention, the fair had representatives from all 41 of NHPS’s schools as well as central office and other parts of the district.
Candidates were able to interview on the spot for positions, and if the administrators or representatives of schools or offices believed a candidate was a potential good fit, they could give them a conditional offer.
NHPS and school districts across the nation have struggled to fill positions in a post-pandemic education landscape where districts have confronted spikes in resignations and drops in student test scores.
The district currently has 197 vacant positions, according to Diggs. Resignations have been at an all-time high for the district; however, according to Diggs the numbers are starting to stabilize across the board for the district.
“There are fewer people entering into this career just in general,” Diggs told the Independent. “Post-Covid, we’ve seen an increase in early retirements as well as people that are changing their careers. Teaching is really hard, and there’s a crisis across the country.”
In recent months, NHPS administrators have faced pressure from the Board of Alders and community members to publish detailed plans about improving math and literacy levels among young students and hiring more teachers. The district also recently ratified a new teacher’s contract with the New Haven Federation of Teachers, which includes a 15 percent pay increase over three years.
“The teacher’s contract will hopefully help fight back against the number of vacant positions in the district,” NHFT President Leslie Blatteau told the Independent at Tuesday’s event. “But, we’re also just focused on retaining our teachers, making sure that they’re happy and supported so that they stick with our district.”
At the district’s two largest high schools, Wilbur Cross and Hillhouse, administrators are hoping to fill roughly a dozen vacant positions each. Cross has four foreign language teaching positions, two math teaching positions, two science positions, two special education positions, two assistant teacher positions and an administrative assistant position open.
Meanwhile, at Hillhouse, administrators are hoping to fill three vacant math teacher positions as well as a bilingual, English, history, and science teaching spot each.
“We haven’t lost anyone this year thankfully, so we’re trying to grow for next year,” Hillhouse administrator Daniel Ojeda told the Independent. “Being a teacher in Connecticut is like being a priest, you really need to want it. With the lengthy certification process and process to be hired as a teacher in this state you really have to show that you want it and you mean it.”
Administrators across the board reported that they had seen an increase in the number of people who were interested in jobs while also seeing fewer resignations. The district is also partnering with local colleges and universities to hire educators straight out of college.
Schools and offices were also participating in a competition on who could decorate their station the best. In the end, the World Languages and Science departments ended up taking the cake with their balloons, world maps and robots.
Teaching is a calling, and a good teacher can make a tremendous difference in many a student’s future. We should be paying them what they are worth for the years of education we require for that job and the tremendously difficult job they do. Having more bilingual teacher will be very helpful in the cities which have larger immigrant populations due to the support services and apartments that available there, since most of the suburbs have zoned out those services and more affordable multifamily housing.