Sun archives
- Plummeting demand for teachers has silver lining (8-7-2010)
- Some teachers moving to Nevada struggle with licensing process (7-18-2010)
- Recruiting blitz on even as teachers await layoffs (4-27-2010)
- Teacher recruiting ‘not pretty,’ and it’s expected to get uglier (4-20-2010)
- After years of explosive growth, schools to feel economic pinch for years to come (3-25-2010)
- Teacher pay cut might not sting recruitment (1-12-2009)
Sun Archives
Beyond the Sun
The group included a government lobbyist, a chemical engineer and a trainer of security officers.
It was new-teacher orientation Wednesday, the run-up to the organized chaos of the first day of school, Aug. 30.
That’s D-Day for public schoolteachers in Clark County, the fifth-largest district in the nation and one facing some of the harshest budget cuts in education.
Nearly 400 teachers — some new to the county, some veteran teachers and some altogether fresh to education — gathered in the echoing cafeteria of Coronado High School in Henderson.
They spent from 8 a.m. to nearly 4 p.m. filling out paperwork, attending sessions on state standards for teaching and asking questions about what to expect on their first day in the 352 elementary, middle and high schools that employ more than 18,000 teachers.
This is the smallest crop of new teachers in years as enrollment is leveling off after decades of explosive growth. Teacher pay ranges from $35,000 to $70,000 a year.
No teacher, at least in the interviews organized by the district and conducted with an official present, mentioned misgivings about joining a district that scores low in graduation rates and, in the view of some critics, public respect.
Nathan Lasha, 29, a first-time teacher from Yakima, Wash., will teach geography to eighth-graders.
He used to train security officers while getting his education degree at Western Governors University. “Up until two days go, I had a weapon,” a Glock 9 mm pistol, “on my body at all times,” he said, grinning.
“The things I really like and enjoy, like history, I want to pass on to others,” he said about teaching. “In the job that I did, I learned a lot of patience, and that definitely is going to translate into the eighth grade.”
Rhiannon Gollhofer, 30, is a native Las Vegan whose family has lived in the area for 80 years. She is a former government lobbyist in Iowa, where she promoted programs for abused children.
She asked herself, “What can I do that I can share my love of government, my love of politics, but actually make a difference in the community that I grew up in?” She has substitute taught in Clark County.
Gollhofer is not teaching social studies, but dance, where she is more needed. She has made a Pilates-style CD of music of Lady Gaga, Kylie Minogue and Queen for her first day.
Her strategy, in part, is to exhaust her students immediately. “My theory is that my job is to get the students’ energy out,” she said, smiling, “and I am doing a disservice to all the other teachers if I don’t let them get their energy out.”
It was a teacher orientation like any other, according to Debbie Tomasetti, who coordinates what is called “teacher induction.” Her first day of school was in 1985 teaching fourth grade at Mountain View Elementary.
“Today is about orientating all the new licensed employees to the Clark County School District,” she said.
And yet it wasn’t like any other. So far, 395 teachers have been hired, 40 percent more than an estimated 275 only a few weeks ago when projected enrollment was still fluid and so was hiring.
Many teachers had been recommended for hire two weeks ago, but their status had not been made final.
Still, this year’s hires, enough for four good-sized schools, is a drop from only three years ago, when the district hired more than 2,300 teachers, or enough for 20 schools.
The hires reflect a stunning contraction. In the boom time of the past two decades, some schools didn’t open on time and had to share rooms in other schools. In the late 1980s, enrollment was 111,000. It is now about 300,000.
For more than a decade, more than 70 schools operated without a summer break, a practice that will end this year because of budget concerns and flattening enrollment.
As recently as 2006, to orient new teachers, the district needed most of the indoor sports arena at Cox Pavilion.
Joseph Lin, originally from New Brighton, Minn., a suburb of St. Paul, is a first-time teacher without an education degree but took a special course to train teachers in needed topics. He will teach math at Rancho High School.
He is a former chemical engineer who was educated at University of California-Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He worked for an environmental engineering firm in Las Vegas for six years but said he felt unchallenged.
“I had a lot of friends growing up who said you always explain things so well to me. Why don’t you become a teacher?” he said.
“And I said to myself: Why don’t I become a teacher?”
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