The Road To TEACH #SXSWedu

Wednesday, March 11 

12:00PM - 1:30PM 

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Theater 2 

320 East 6th Street

Click here for more information

Do you have what it takes to be a teacher? Three college students, all aspiring teachers, embark on a cross-country road trip of self-discovery and adventure and find real-life inspiration from educators, policy makers, social entrepreneurs, and activists who share their own roads to the classroom. We follow Nadia, Rafael, and Grace's personal journeys as they contemplate their futures and begin to understand the vast opportunities, personal rewards, and vital need for passionate young people to teach. Join the Q&A after the film and discuss how to inspire the next generation to teach.

Panelists

Grace Worm

Roadtrip Nation - Roadtripper

Julie Evans

Project Tomorrow - CEO

Lisa Zimble

Participant Media/TEACH Campaign - Producer

Mike Marriner

Roadtrip Nation - Co-Founder

Rafael Silva

Roadtrip Nation - Roadtripper

Exciting News! Project Tomorrow Named as Partner in 100Kin10, National Network to Grow STEM Teaching Force!

Project Tomorrow commits to advancing the goal of recruiting, preparing, and retaining 100,000 science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) teachers in 10 years

100Kin10, a multi-sector network addressing the national imperative to train 100,000 science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) teachers by 2021, today announced that Project Tomorrow has been accepted as a partner. 

With a highly selective and competitive selection process, Project Tomorrow is extremely honored to be one of only 31 organizations chosen nationwide in this year's application process. As part of 100Kin10, Project Tomorrow will recruit 2,050 excellent STEM teacher candidates, with 25% (512) from groups traditionally under-represented in STEM, in California by 2018, as measured by the number of students majoring or minoring in education and a science or math discipline.

More and better-trained STEM teachers are essential to prepare America’s students to fully participate in our democracy and to understand and respond to complex national and global challenges. To compete in the global marketplace and provide opportunity to all young Americans, all students—not  just those fortunate enough to attend certain schools— must have basic STEM skills and knowledge. Project Tomorrow is one of nearly 200 100Kin10 partners unified by a single, ambitious goal: to prepare all students with the high-quality STEM knowledge and skills to equip them for success in college and the workplace.

Organizations are accepted as 100Kin10 partners following a rigorous vetting process conducted by a team of partner reviewers and the University of Chicago. Reviewers are looking for organizations that bring innovation, boldness, and a proven track-record to their commitment(s) toward expanding, improving, and retaining the best of the nation’s STEM teaching force, or building the 100Kin10 movement. 

A complete list of partners—with new partners highlighted— is available on the 100Kin10 website. 

The Teach Campaign: Recruiting New Teachers Who will be able to Make a Difference in Not Only Their Students’ Lives But also in the Profession Itself

“If you can’t do, teach” is just one of several negative sentiments towards teaching that has made education an undesirable profession. However, with the predicted one million teachers that are set to retire in the next four to six years, the profession needs as many bright and eager new educators as it can get. In order to deal with this change the Department of Education created Teach, a campaign that hopes to combat negative sentiments and attract high-achieving college graduates.

Under the slogan “Make More. Teach,” the campaign uses videos and radio announcements to portray teaching as meaningful and captivating as more popular careers, such as medicine and law. “The challenge is to change the conversation around teaching so that it becomes the career that you want your child to go into rather than the career that you counsel children out of,” explains Kathy Payne, the senior director of education leadership at State Farm.

One of the negative sentiments towards teaching is that there are not enough job openings for hopeful teachers. With the upcoming retirement of the baby boomers, there is now “an amazing chance to make a difference for decades to come,” says Arne Duncan, secretary of education. Through financial support from sponsors, Teach is able to hire recruiters to visit college campuses in order to speak to undergraduate students about a future career in teaching. The campaign also deals with the battles within the public education system concerning the use of standardized testing in teacher performance evaluations and the rollout of the new Common Core standards. “If you find different ways to communicate with and teach kids, where it’s not just that same old thing…that’s what’s going to get those test scores raised,” says Cliff Skeet, group creative director at McGarryBowen, the advertising agency that developed the videos and ads used by the campaign.

The Teach campaign aims to recruit top students into the teaching field, making the profession as competitive and invigorating as medicine, law, and engineering. “Teachers today are breaking down obstacles,” says former teacher Taylor Mali. “[They are] finding innovative ways to instill old lessons, proving that greatness can be found in everyday places.” Through the campaign, the Department of Education hopes to recruit new teachers who will be able to make a difference in not only their students’ lives but also in the profession itself.

Here at Project Tomorrow, our mission is to ensure that today's students are well prepared to be tomorrow's innovators, leaders and engaged citzens of the world. Through our YouthTEACH2Learn program and the Future Educators Association of California we are working towards preparing the next great generation of teachers.

The YouthTEACH2Learn program is a career exploration program where students explore teaching as a career. During the course, the students gain practical experience by observing elementary school classrooms, learning how to teach, developing and teaching standards-based lessons to younger students in neighboring elementary schools and participating in local community service projects. To learn more about YouthTEACH2Learn log onto http://www.tomorrow.org/programs/yt2l.html.

The Future Educators Association of California, an initiative of Project Tomorrow, was established in order to “attract, equip and provide experiences for students who are exploring teaching as a future career; to develop essential skills that will lead to highly trained and qualified teachers.” Now, more than ever, we must invest & support our future educators in order to plan for a bright tomorrow. To learn more about F.E.A California, log onto http://www.tomorrow.org/fea/.

Read the article: Campaign Seeks to Recruit Top Students to Become Teachers in the New York Times here, and be sure to let us know what you think!

Have a great week.

-The Project Tomorrow team

Written by Lisa Chu, Project Tomorrow Fall Intern