Next year, ELHS will be adding Exploring Education to the curriculum, which is a class that will give students an opportunity to learn and get real world experience in the education field.

English teacher Sheri Seyka is going to be the teacher for the class next year.

Seyka has a connection to this class because she already helps teach future English teachers at MSU through the teacher prep program. She wants to teach the class to help a young generation of teachers.
“I like looking at how students learn and how teachers can reach students.  I [also] know that we need really good teachers in our future,” Seyka said.

This class was created with the intent to help combat the current teacher shortage in America.  Public schools had four percent of their teaching positions vacant as of October of 2022 according to the National Center for Education Statistics.  

“[The] district has recognized [the] teacher shortage, different districts are doing different things [for] preparing students who are interested in the field of education,” Seyka said.

Additionally, the state of Michigan has developed a new opportunity called “The Future Proud Michigan Educators”, a course made to get people more interested and start considering a job as an educator.

“We’re using that course as a base for the curriculum, and we’re growing and expanding the program from there,” Seyka said.

According to the website for the course, their goal is “a continuation of Michigan’s efforts to grow and diversify the educator workforce and reduce educator shortages.” 

The state of Michigan is providing these resources to help future educators in Michigan.

According to Seyka a usual week in this class is going to be spending two or three days helping out different teachers throughout the building. Teachers are going to be able to volunteer to have a student come and shadow them during their fourth period.  When the students are with the teachers they will be able to shadow, help and observe them.  There might even be an opportunity for the students to go to different elementary schools throughout the district and shadow teachers there.

“So we’re trying to figure out transportation to get students to different elementary classrooms within our time constraint hour,” Seyka said.

The rest of the week is going to be spent in the classroom learning what it means to be an educator and different  techniques they can use. Some of the topics they will be covering are  cultivating healthy learning communities and developing inclusive teaching practices.

There are many people trying to combat the teacher shortage issue, and hopefully many students will be able to see teaching as a possible career choice.

“I just love working with students, so it’s something that can hopefully be contagious and spread to other people,”  Seyka said.