Parents and guardians of students in the Winfield-Mount Union Community School District recently received a letter from Secondary Principal Dave Edwards regarding the increasingly difficult task of hiring new teachers.
The District has four positions in the secondary level and three positions in the elementary level that were not able to be filled for the upcoming 2022-2023 school year. The four secondary positions are; science, vocal music, physical education and consumer science. The three elementary positions are; vocal music, 3-year-old preschool, and 4-year-old preschool. 

Edwards shares they will use an online program named Elevate for eighth grade science, physical science, chemistry and physics. Edwards explains how this teaching practice will be initiated, “it’s kind of an online program but instead of kids working strictly online at their pace, they actually provide a teacher that will be projected into the classroom, will be live during class time and teach the actual classes, during the times that we have them scheduled, and then we provide, they call it a classroom coach, so it’s a person that will be an adult that will be in the room to monitor behavior, help with passing things out, keeping kids on tasks and those kinds of things. That’s a couple of ways that we were able to cover things.”    

To learn more about the current teacher shortage listen to today’s JJ Nichting Company In Touch with Southeast Iowa program today on-air and online at kciiradio.com