Blog Date Submitted
Teacher educators, consider your own journey into education. Did you come from a family of educators? Or maybe you had a teacher who left an indelible mark that influenced your decision? These are inspired reasons to enter the field, but how do we reach those who never considered teaching, who may be the first in their family to attend college, or who didn’t have a teacher they connected with? Recruiting candidates with a diversity of experiences is absolutely vital to our mission of enhancing the quality of education for all students, but this work takes time, intention, and continuous reflection.
Over the last two years, our outreach and recruitment efforts at San José State have grown in several ways. We have established a college advising center to support both current and prospective students, built strong cross-campus collaborations, hired a dedicated outreach and recruitment advisor, and increased our presence in the community with partner educators. This multi-pronged approach is evolving and becoming the foundation of our recruitment work.
Layered onto this are activities that respond to the requests like these from PK-12 educators from our region of the state:
- Making classroom presentations at local high schools that have child development and elementary education career academies;
- Hosting campus visits with career academies (high schools), future teacher clubs (community college), and career changers (industry);
- Offering on-campus, off-campus, and virtual advising hours for prospective students;
- Conducting lab sessions for prospective teachers using Cal State Apply and our own department application websites to apply for our credential programs.