CMS gears up teacher recruiting

Want to teach in a place with great weather,  exciting roller coasters and Swedish meatballs?  Then you might want to get in touch with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools,  which is recruiting for current vacancies and the 2014-15 school year.

CMS recruiters have already visited Pennsylvania, New Mexico, New York, Illinois, Michigan and Virginia,  as well as events in the Carolinas,  according to a recent report to the school board.  And the district has created an  "I Am CMS"  marketing campaign that includes fliers,  postcards and such attention-getters as  "I am 'mint' to work for CMS" candies.

The postcard highlights such quality-of-life factors as sports, Carowinds amusement park,  EpiCentre nightlife and the chance to shop for furniture and eat meatballs at IKEA.

On a more serious front,  CMS is hoping the expansion of highly paid  "opportunity culture"  jobs for classroom teachers will help lure top teachers from around the country.  Starting next year,  17 more schools will offer opportunities for their best teachers to take on expanded duties working with other teachers and more students.  Details will vary by school,  but the four-school Project LIFT debut this year offers supplements up to $23,000 a year.

If you want to read more about that program from someone who's in the thick of it,  check out this blog by Ranson Middle School math teacher Romain Bertrand,  who holds one of the new jobs leading multiple classrooms.

Bertrand

"For years, a sad reality has been hurting our educational system, at least here in North Carolina:  If you are good at teaching and you truly enjoy it, the only way for you to expand your impact and advance in your career is to … leave the very same classroom where you currently excel,"  Bertrand writes.  "This paradox has become a dirty little secret that we all whisper:  At one point, I am going to have to leave the classroom."

Bertrand explains how his new job offers a way to work around that paradox  --  without having to move into a  "facilitator"  or administrative job that keeps him from regular contact with kids.

Even as Superintendent Heath Morrison celebrated the Belk Foundation grant to expand the opportunity culture program,  he cautioned it's not the sole solution for enticing great teachers to CMS. North Carolina's low pay scale threatens to undermine the best efforts,  he said:  "We can't be $10,000 below the national average and think the opportunity culture is going to solve that."  Morrison is among many voices calling for a sustained statewide effort to make teaching a higher paid, better respected profession in North Caroilna.