Yes. It’s a very tight economy. And many school districts and programs are laying off and not hiring. But teaching still remains a good place to work. In the next few years, we will see a large percentage of teachers retiring. It probably would have happened sooner except for this “don’t call it a depression” depression that we are in.

To prepare for this change there two programs I want to highlight for career changers.

One is called Encore.org.

From their website:

“Encore.org comes from Civic Ventures, a nonprofit think tank that is leading the call to engage millions of experienced individuals in becoming a force for social change. Civic Ventures focuses on creating pathways to encore careers that provide continued income doing work that is personally fulfilling and helps address some of society’s biggest challenges.

While Encore.org is not a job placement service, it provides free, comprehensive information that helps individuals transition to jobs in the nonprofit world and the public sector.”

Another interesting program is The New Teacher Project.

They describe themselves as:

“The New Teacher Project (TNTP) is a national nonprofit dedicated to closing the achievement gap by ensuring that high-need students get outstanding teachers. Founded by teachers in 1997, TNTP partners with school districts and states to implement scalable responses to their most acute teacher quality challenges. Since its inception, TNTP has trained or hired approximately 37,000 teachers, benefiting an estimated 5.9 million students nationwide. It has established more than 75 programs and initiatives in 31 states and published four seminal studies on urban teacher hiring and school staffing.”

Check these programs out. Plan now for the future.