After seeing last year's sea otter program canceled due to blizzard conditions, UND officials were ready to meet the group with hopes the students would decide that UND is the place for them.
"My name is Katie Stermer. I am an outreach specialist for the outreach for teacher recruitment and retention.
We have, gosh, 11 different schools here to learn about careers and education and so they're going to get a chance to tour the university today but also spend a lot of time in the education building meeting with faculty and learning about different programs we have. I'm hoping that they have the opportunity to ask a lot of questions about the teaching profession and learn about what it is like to study to become an educator because I think a lot of people don't realize like there's a lot of field experience work and there's a lot of hands-on experiences that they can have while they're a student learning to be a teacher but yeah it's mostly just to answer a lot of their questions get them thinking about and envisioning themselves in an education program and as future teachers."
The day starts with an introduction and a welcome by Shelby Witte. She's the dean of the College of Education and Human Development at University of North Dakota. She says the demand for teachers is high not only in North Dakota but across the nation. She says while some consider the situation a teacher shortage she sees it as a teacher catastrophe.
"Because so many people are retiring and less and less folks are interested in going into the classroom we are facing many schools and districts with so many vacancies that can't be filled that are very difficult to fill and so we are hoping to work on more and more strategies to incentivize the profession of teaching to help change the narrative that's out there about teaching to help encourage folks to trust that teachers have the professionalism and the training to do and know what's best for kids in the classroom. So our work starts here."
The students are then split into two groups. The first will do a quick walking tour of the campus. The second group heads over to the education building to find out more about the programs offered at UND. I've been allowed to tag along through the day with a group of three students from Grafton and their UND guide...
"Aubrey Griedle and the three girls from Grafton are the first group to tour the campus. Upon returning to the education building they get ready for a deep dive into the program offers.
Chris Clark is the coordinator of the secondary social studies program at UND.
"A lot of students that come through here today they're interested in that pre-k that young elementary. 'How do you get them to gravitate to the higher grades?"
I think a lot of what we do is we appeal to their love of a particular subject you know that they really resonate with so we like to really get those people who are passionate about a particular subject and if they really are still interested in working with younger folks we try and get them interested in like a middle level degree.
We like to have that option because a lot of people go in thinking they want to work in elementary school but then they also realize that I don't want to have to teach every subject I really want to focus on this one subject and so that's kind of how we get them talking at least to us in our program."
After some table hopping and conversations along the way the students make their way back to the Memorial Union with a lot of printed information and a lot of things to think about. One of the students from my group Lia is the first to admit there's been a lot packed into the past two hours.
"Yeah just so much to learn today here and it's just so overwhelming taking it all in and just hearing about all the different how you can do all the different fields and all the different things in schools and it's just it's crazy."
And once again we check in with their guide Aubrey.
"Can you foresee them in front of a classroom or something?
Definitely yeah I think the way that they've been carrying themselves I definitely can see them being future teachers."
And so whether it's Lia, Kiah or Alyssa or a student from one of the other 10 schools, officials are hopeful some will step forward and help lead the way in helping resolve the demand for new educators in the classroom.
For Prairie Public, I'm Todd McDonald.