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Teach Kentucky Provides A Community
Teaching can definitely feel overwhelming, even if you’ve taken all the courses and done student teaching and networked with other educators. It is a little like parenthood: you can plan and prepare all you want, but you don’t really understand the work until or unless you do it. Some people come to teaching (and parenthood) early; they know it is something they want. Others, though, don’t take a traditional or expedient path to teaching. They get a degree or even enter a profession and only later determine that teaching might be for them.
Lauren Niemann, a science teacher at Fern Creek High School in Jefferson County, Kentucky, didn’t plan to become an educator. When she left Louisville to attend the University of Oklahoma, it wasn’t entirely clear that she would ever be a Louisvillian again, either. She did know she liked science, but even her initial major–meteorology–would turn out not to be a sure thing.
During her sophomore year, Lauren changed her focus to zoology and eventually earned her Bachelor of Science. She says she was a little fuzzy about what she wanted to do with this degree which is why graduate school appealed to her. It was there that she taught undergraduate classes and labs and realized teaching was something she enjoyed. “I didn’t intend to teach, but it was a way that tuition was paid for. I did not know it would be fun,” she says. “It scared the tar out of me at first, but then I was like, ‘I get to talk about cool stuff all day long and they pay me for it. How great is this for a job?’”
Because she hadn’t gone through a traditional teacher program in college, she wasn’t entirely sure how to navigate the process of becoming a certified teacher. Fortunately, the nonprofit organization Teach Kentucky heard about her and began encouraging her to come home to Louisville and join the program which she did in 2010.
Teach Kentucky’s focus is helping college graduates who have not gone through teaching programs get the experience and pedagogical training necessary to become expert teachers. But the program is not only about helping people commit to the field; it is also about helping people find reasons why they should commit (or in Lauren’s case, recommit) to Kentucky.
The nonprofit recruits college graduates and career changers from all over the country, and they offer them a built-in community of people who welcome them. Lauren says Teach Kentucky has a relationship with Bellarmine University and provides housing for several weeks for participants who are new to Louisville or don’t yet have housing. “It was like summer camp. You live together, learn about each other, and form relationships that last,” Lauren says.
“Initially, I thought I was getting financial support from Teach Kentucky, and as a bonus I’d have people around that I could get help from,” Lauren says. However, she realizes now that Teach Kentucky, under the guidance of founder and president Rowan Claypool and its board, is about much more than teaching. “It’s about Louisville citizen recruitment,” she says. At Fern Creek High School, Lauren now teaches a dual-credit sustainability class, and she recognizes that Teach Kentucky offers a “perfect example of thinking about teaching in a more sustainable way.”
When people think about professional recruitment of any kind, but especially teachers, they most often think of salary. And a liveable salary commensurate with experience or training is important. But Lauren says it is much more than that. “To keep people in the teaching profession requires that we care about people that we’re with either the kids or the community built around the profession,” she says. Teach Kentucky provides a community that, ultimately, becomes a critical piece of teacher retainment. “Once we’re here for the job, what keeps us here is not the job at all. It’s the community that is created to support us,” Lauren says. She even married someone she met from a Teach Kentucky gathering who had been in a previous cohort.
Because of its special model of support, Teach Kentucky’s participants don’t just become people who do a job; they become really effective teachers, the kinds of teachers who are committed to the field of education and who are nominated for awards and honors. Lauren, for example, was a finalist in the high school category for the 2023 Kentucky Teacher of the Year. She credits Teach Kentucky with helping her get through the hard first years and honing a passion for and excellence in instruction.
By Carrie Vittitoe
