New Teachers with Talent Together

Talent Togehter has placed 218 new teachers since 2022. Dr. Sarena Shivers joins us to discuss how it's working and where the program is headed. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You heard the numbers just before Top of the Hour news.
But since it's launched in twenty twenty two, Talent Together
has placed two hundred and eighteen new teachers in classrooms
across Michigan. This is West Michigan's morning News Stee Kelly
and BRADMKAITA executive director of Talent Together is Serena Shivers.
Thank you so much for joining us this morning.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Good morning, Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
It is really a model for a lot of businesses.
For about a decade, we've been talking about attracting and
retaining talent. It's been the number one issue in HR
departments across the states. So you guys got together and
did something about it. So give us a little step back.
How does Talent Together work well.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Talent Together, as you mentioned, was launched in December twenty
twenty two, and the goal of Talent Together is really
to focus on removing those barriers that take candidates that
may have always been interested in being a teacher. So
they could have been a custodian, a secretary, a teaching assistant,
maybe a food service worker, maybe a parent the community,

(01:01):
and we help that person identify a post secondary institution
that matches with their area of interest in certification, and
we work through all of those barriers, whether they're financial,
whether they are time scheduling, whether in some cases it
might be childcare, to ensure that those aspiring teachers are

(01:25):
able to enter into the program be successful throughout their
university coursework because they have to go to school just
like any other teacher. And then one of the things
that is unique about Talent Together is that we utilize
a registered apprentice process, just like if you were a
welder or you're interested in being an electrician, and we

(01:48):
put them match them with a mentor teacher that is
highly qualified and successful in their craft, and they's been
a year long learning from that mentor teacher.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
So read to talk about in the last ten years,
how this has really changed as far as people wanting
to get into teaching education. I say that because my
parents were both thirty plus a year retired teachers at Rockford.
My brother was a teacher. I mean, Steve had teachers
in his family, and it used to be that, okay,
if you came from a teacher family. I was the
black sheep. By the way, I got it a radio.

(02:19):
I don't know what I was thinking But the point
is is that you know, you would see a lot
of teachers' kids want to become teachers, right because you
just learned the lifestyle, summer's off, all that kind of stuff,
And that changed, And it changed to a point where
I had people I knew who were telling their kids,
you know, maybe you used to think twice about going
to the teaching profession and so forth, because a lot

(02:40):
of things changed with that talk about what you guys
had to do. Because this is monumental, I think in
the shift now with these young teachers getting back into
the mix.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Well, everything that you just said is trip. The teaching
profession over the last decade, probably even before that, has
seen a detonation in people entering into the professor And
there's a whole host of reasons, some of which you
just described, you know, family discouraging or maybe even a
teacher discouraging that maybe in the family. Listen, my mom

(03:09):
is an educator and I became an educator, so I
didn't listen to her, But there was a period of
time where I remember very distinctully her, you know, saying
well do you want to do this or do you
want to do that? So yeah, that definitely happens, probably
happens in every career. But you know, if I'm completely
honest with you, we have had over five thousand applicants
in the last several years, so I don't know what's

(03:31):
going on out there, but we're really seeing that people
are interested in being in the profession, they're interested in
being teachers. Maybe they just need help with some of
the barriers that we are able to successfully remove.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
In Talent Together, you can find out everything you need
to know about this super flexible pathway. Yeah at Ami
Talenttogether dot org. We'll get the link in the podcast
section atwoodradio dot com. Serena Shivers is the executive director
of Talent Together. Thank you for your time this morning.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Thank you, and have a wonderful day.