Dean of Education wants new teaching grads to have hope

Despite dwindling job opportunities for teachers, a provincial recruitment fair made its way to St. John's Wednesday, following a similar event in Corner Brook earlier in the week.

Dean of Education at Memorial University, Kirk Anderson,said job fairs like this one don't just offer career prospects, they also offer hope to discouraged students.

"One of the things I don't want to happen is for people to get the perception that there's no jobs out there," Anderson said.

"We're open for business, we want our students to come to us. We have among the best teachers in Canada, which makes them the best in the world and if people are interested in teaching, we want them to come."

About 200 education students are expected to graduate from Memorial University this year, significantly lower than the 450 teachers that graduatedin 2009.

Anderson said because the demand for teachers is softening across the country, the faculty has been reducingenrolment by 175 to 200 spaces over the last five years.

According to the Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers Association, there are about 6,000 full-time teachers in the province, and 1,000 substitutes. Dozens of permanent positions will be eliminated next year when the province cuts 77.5 teaching positions, however, upwards of 150 teachers are expected to retire.

• 77.5 positions to be cut, but new teachers will still be hired

Tough times for teachers

For soon-to-be graduates like AmyPalmer, who's entering the workforce in September, it's a stressful time to become ateacher.

"Just becauseeverything on the news, and everyone saying 'Oh, you'll never get a job here,' and all that disheartening stuff that you hear, but I'm just holding steady and working for it and I'll do what I can," she said.

Students Ben Riche and D'Arcy Briggs attended thefair in search of potential job opportunities for the fall. Riche said the recent budget cuts made an already bad situation even worse.

"The job situation wasn't great before then so we've got a lot of thinking to do about how we're going to use the education that we do have," Richesaid.

Briggs is prepared to go the substitute teaching route if no permanent positions comes along.

"It's something you've got to do, right? I mean, I think we're all teachers not because of the glorious pay we're going to get but because we love the profession, so that's something I'm more than happy to do," Briggs said.

While both men would rather stay close to home, neither are ruling out recruiters from outside theprovince.

"I'd like to stay here as long as possible, but if the financial situation becomes too much of a problem then looking outside is something that everyone has to do it's what a lot of Newfoundlanders do, not just in education," said Riche.

Out of province prospects

And that's just what Anderson hopes to hear.

The dean wants students to be aware of international job prospects, as he said there are 1.8 million teachers needed in 114 countries around the world.

"We have a lot of our graduates who go to the U.K., they'll go to parts of China, they're in Canadian schools, in [a] Canadian curriculum," Anderson said.

"They get Canadian experience in an international context and someday we actually hope that they'll come back to us as internationally experienced, Canadian-trained teachersand that's a wonderful combination for the learning environment for our schools."