As the brick goes up on the new Park Hill Elementary School in Midway Independent School District, one person is especially excited,
“It’s really taking on that elementary school look now.”
That’s Dr. Mandy Johnson she’s the principal for Park Hill, and she has quite the task ahead of her. Park Hill is scheduled to start taking about 450 students beginning this fall, and not only does she need staff for the school, it’s in the middle of a teaching shortage.
Taking a look at the Midway ISD website, there are pages and pages of openings at all of the campuses across the district.
To help fill some of those vacancies, Midway ISD is hosting a job fair tomorrow morning from 9 am till 11am at Midway High School. All of the schools will be there recruiting potential employees.
Johnson tells me one of the more challenging openings is for special needs students.
“We want special people to come and help us fill those roles, people who are loving, people who are very patient, and just have the desire to be there.”
When Park Hill opens its doors, Johnson says it will be welcoming three-year olds for the first time as well for Pre-K.
“We just feel like the earlier, that we can start students in education, the better off we are going to be.”
According to the Texas Education Agency website, you might be able to start teaching once you enroll in an alternative certification program, obtain a teaching job, and then apply for a probationary certificate.
Kathleen Minshew is the District Mentor Coordinator for Midway and says that they can help with alternative teaching certification.
“Regardless of the program that a teacher might be a part of, we can work with them, and I work directly with some of those programs to help folks finish out their certification.”
Minshew says that the mentor program is for new teachers to the district as well as new teachers just entering the profession.
“If they’re brand new to the profession, they’ll have two years of induction. Where they will have a classroom teacher assigned to them, to kind of help them along and get them acclimated into their new classroom.”
The job fair is happening tomorrow morning from 9am until 11am at Midway High School, 8200 Mars drive. You can see a complete list of positions available with the district at midway isd dot org, just click on the Job Fair tab.