TEACH KENTUCKY INC

Teach Kentucky seeks to recruit more high-quality, content knowledgeable, diverse teachers, particularly in STEM areas, to meet the teacher shortages of our local school districts, primarily Jefferson County Public School (JCPS). Using national recruitment strategies, we recruit on 1,200+ college campuses seeking candidates with exemplary academic credentials who exhibit a strong desire to teach.

This need is particularly difficult to meet at a time when the marketplace for teachers is collapsing and enrollment in traditional colleges of education is plummeting. To further complicate recruitment, new teachers are routinely placed in the most challenging schools, where they encounter significant stressors that decrease retention rates and instructional efficacy.

High retention is a priority for TKY, and one way we work toward that goal is through our unique Summer Institute. The Summer Institute is a seven-week course on vital pedagogy curriculum, lesson planning, and classroom management techniques designed and implemented by veteran master teachers. The material covered helps prepare our new teachers for careers in education so that they are effective and thrive in the most difficult schools and classrooms where they are needed most.

Teach Kentucky is a selective teacher recruitment program that recruits motivated, talented and qualified college graduates to teach in Kentucky's public schools, enhancing the quality of education for our students and enriching our civic life by retaining these bright minds in Kentucky.

Teach Kentucky is driven by three underlying, connected beliefs: education is the key to future opportunity and life success, all children deserve access to rigorous, high quality education, regardless of their socioeconomic status and the teacher at the front of the room is still the most important lever to improve public education.

Teach Kentucky has forged strong, productive relationships with local public school districts and universities to achieve its goals. These partnerships allow TKY teachers to teach in public schools while completing a two-year alternative certification program for their Master of Arts in Teaching. Since Teach Kentucky's inception, we have recruited to the Louisville area 316 new teachers from over 40 states. Today, 150 of those teachers remain employed in greater Louisville and teach over 15,000 middle and high school students daily.

Teach Kentucky is built on the premise of leverage. For every future teacher we recruit, we launch a career in education and provide an agent of change in the lives of the 100 plus students they teach each school year. At the same time, we bring a new college educated resident to our community.

Teach Kentucky teachers historically have worked with our community's most disadvantaged students, many of who are students of color. As the state's only majority-minority school district, JCPS has the most diverse student population in Kentucky. The 29th largest school district in the nation, it serves over 98,000 Kentucky students, or approximately 80 percent of Jefferson County's school-aged children. 62 percent of JCPS students qualify for free or reduced lunch and approximately 4,500 are homeless. 125 languages are spoken by JCPS students. These challenges present significant barriers to academic success, and research shows that effective teachers are a significant factor in helping low-income students overcome these barriers.