It is no secret that school districts across the nation are battling a workforce shortage - not only of teachers but support staff as well. No school is too large or too small to be immune to the problem, which has left some scrambling to find ways to meet the needs. Callaway Public Schools is no exception, and they have come up with a unique idea that is, well…a good one!

Starting this semester, three Callaway High School seniors - Kinsey Pflaster, Irelyn Rosfeld and Emalee Glendy - are working in the classrooms assisting teachers in much the same role that para-educators do. Superintendent Bryon Hanson explained that because they are still high school students they cannot be considered “paras”, but rather academic tutors.

“Their duties vary a little bit from a para, and really the only difference is you have to be a high school graduate to be a para but they can work as tutors,” Hanson explained.

“It’s hard in education finding people right now and we were down a couple of paras and had been actively looking for more than a month. We also know that the crunch of finding teachers is not going away anytime soon,” Hanson continued. “We have more teachers retiring than we have education students graduating. We’ve been talking about ways to expose kids to what an education profession might look like, and have been actively trying to find ways for those kids interested in going into education to have opportunities to look at that from the other side.”

The administrative team at CHS was aware of a few seniors who were considering the possibility of going seniors who were considering the possibility of going into education. Hanson said those students were most likely already going to be serving as teacher’s aids during the second semester so the idea was presented to utilize those students in a different way. “We sent out a message to students asking anyone who may be interested in this program to come and se us,” Hanson said. “We slotted hours based on the hig school schedule of where we needed help in classroom and we ended up with three students who are ver interested in education and we were able to slot them in with some teachers. Now they are getting some hands-on practical experience.”

The time the students spend tutoring not only counts as their work study hour, they are also getting paid. Through the work study program the students are required to do reflections and turn in weekly what they are working on, Hanson explained. He said Callaway is not the first school to use students in paid positions, nor is this the first time CHS has done Superintendent that. Each summer kids are hired for summer maintenance projects, and other districts he is aware of h maintenance roles during after-school hours.

Hanson said one of the first things he did when the discussion of the idea began was to call the Nebraska Department of Education to make sure that was even allowed. He learned that using the students in tuto positions was perfectly acceptable, and when the idea was presented to the kids they jumped at the chance.

“This is something we are going to continue. My ho would be that if we can get four kids to do this eve year, and two of those four decide to go into educati and are willing to come back to our area, that's eig potential teachers from here over a 4-ye period. So the idea of growing people th might want to go into the profession i really good thing as well,” said Hanson. Hanson said the idea was born throu

Hanson said the idea was born throu brainstorming meetings between h and Principal Heath Birkel, along with t special education teachers. “We had find ways to help our kids. We tried all the inside the box ideas and were havi a hard time finding people, so we start throwing out outside-the-box ide That one got thrown out and we thoug hmm…that might work.” yon Hanson “I don’t think this teacher shortage is going to go away anytime soon. We didn’t get he t and it’s going to take us a few years to get o of it. Our ability to get people excited about educatio and sell ourselves to potential candidates is just going t become more and more important,” he said.

The district instituted a summer learning camp last year and had some high school students working wit the younger kids in that program. Hanson said that wa e. pretty successful, and they plan to do that again this ye e It is just another way to introduce those upperclassm y to the possibility of a career in education.

“We don’t give our kids enough credit sometim t They are brilliant. I have kids in my building that c ar program a computer, code and build digital platform t Hanson said. “We’ve been employing our kids mo a and more to help us grow as a school district. goal, obviously, is to be fully staffed on paras a h we are going to do some things this spring to try m help with that next year. But even when you’re fu e staffed there are always little chunks of time wh o you can use somebody. And if we can find kids that f interested in going into this field and give them so g experience, then we are going to continue this.”

Contact Ellen Mortensenat ellen@syndicatepub.com