Trending
MARQUETTE -- In light of a shortage of educators at all levels across the United States, one small group at Northern Michigan University is reigniting students' passion for teaching.
The organization, Future Educators of NMU, was formed in the 2022 fall semester to bring a sense of community to the university's education majors. Although teaching is just as important as ever, it seems less and less people are opting to fill that role, making an internal support system integral to their education.
"I want to make a difference in lives and I want to help," said FENMU President Claire Branding. "That's a really exciting opportunity to go into a classroom and potentially change so many lives over your career, but it's also terrifying. I had teachers in high school that completely affected my life and the direction it was headed and how I felt about myself and how I felt about my classmates. (That) power is a beautiful thing, but everyone I know is so scared of messing it up."
The concerns of the young people who are hoping to become educators do not fall onto deaf ears. Marquette-Alger Regional Educational Service Agency Superintendent Greg Nyen said the teacher shortage could be due to the increase in accountability for teachers but decrease in post-employment benefits.
"So on the one hand we're saying, 'Do more, do it with less' and on the other hand we're saying, 'We don't have a lot of value for you' and that's … contributing to the lack of individuals who are willing to go into education," Nyen said.
However, their anxieties don't stop there. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, firearms became the leading cause of death for children up to age 18 in the United States in 2020. With the majority of these being homicides in schools, teachers and teachers-to-be are more concerned than ever about their safety in their future career.
Nyen stated that no matter how much they attempt to prevent it, many in law enforcement would say really it's only a matter of time until a school shooting takes place in this area.
"They didn't teach us how to make your classroom a hard target," Nyen said. "The fact that we consider how we construct new school buildings to make them more impenetrable by assailants, that's a very scary thought."
Branding emphasized that having a space to air out their shared fears as future educators is important to keeping a healthy state of mind.
"It's OK to be terrified, we don't always have to talk about how excited we are," she said.
In fact, FENMU's most successful activity throughout its first academic year together was its Face Your Fears yoga night. Education majors joined each other on campus to share their anxieties while studying and do yoga to take a break from the hustle and bustle of daily life. Those present remarked that they were thankful to be heard and to have these difficult conversations.
Nyen was equally pleased to hear about a group of young educators getting together to support one another in tumultuous times such as these.