We continue to look at how Kentucky colleges and universities are addressing the teacher shortage as our Laura Rogers tells us, that begins with educating the educator.

Kristen Burks is a sophomore at Western Kentucky University four times getting her diploma to become a science teacher.

Wanting to help students understand something that I find so interesting is what I'm passionate about.

Teachers in training are in high demand.

We have fewer students going into teaching, but at the same time, we have so many teachers leaving the field.

The reasons for which are varied.

You know, it's not desirable when you see that your teachers are being overworked, like who wants to go into that job?

Teaching is a demanding job.

It's not just a 9 to 5 job.

It's an every day.

Always thinking about students.

So then Dr. Kishi says labor shortages in the school system have worsened since the pandemic.

We have superintendents driving busses.

We have teachers that are taking their period to go teach another class where where there's no one to teach.

The pandemic also changed some priorities in the classroom.

Trauma informed care, social, emotional learning are all pieces that we touched on earlier but did not have the same focus.

It is with intentionality that we help our teacher candidates prepare.

As schools increasingly find it difficult to fill open positions.

So think about an area of personal growth.

WQ is among the colleges and universities helping to provide solutions.

WQ has been very creative in how we are supporting our districts and actually our enrollment is up slightly from the numbers we had pre-pandemic.

The thing that makes me the most excited is whenever students get that aha moment, like they understand it and they understand the importance of.

This you to.

Seeing how the knowledge they find in the classroom connects to the real world outside of the four walls.

What percent?

Burks is a student ambassador for the College of Education and Behavioral Sciences.

She is also involved in Sky Teach, a program that aims to increase enrollment for the next generation of math and science teachers in Kentucky.

Collings was also inspired.

Each Please ask me questions if you don't know where I'm getting this information.

I teach, offered a lot of things.

One was observing early in the classroom, so you got to watch master teachers in the classroom and then teach those same students.

So you designed your own lessons.

We have our teacher candidates in the schools, learning in the school environment, learning the culture, learning how to interact with students.

WQ offers a classified and certified program, apprenticeship models and a dual credit program in high schools to encourage and prepare future educators.

I feel teaching is the most important profession we have because teachers have the opportunity to shape our future generations.

And without strong teachers, we're not going to have the doctors and the computer programmers and the people we need for future generations being.

In the communities, classrooms and teaching has been a great opportunity to get to hands on experience.

Thank you, Laura Rogers, for that report.

As we've told you before, WQ is also partnering with Hardin County Schools to help teacher education majors have less student debt.

They'll match financial aid offered by the school district.