These Year 11 students are on a mission to promote teaching in rural areas to teacher education students in universities.
Image credit: Phil Brown, Country Education Partnership, on behalf of New South Wales Rural Youth Ambassadors 2022.
Want to solve the current teacher shortage? Then talk to this group of Year 11 students who recently visited University of Technology Sydney as part of their 2022 Youth Ambassador program run by Country Education Partnership.
The students are Rural Youth Ambassadors from rural and remote NSW. Recently they came to UTS and showcased their ideas, with academics from UTS, UNSW, CSU and Macquarie universities, on why teachers should consider living and working in a rural NSW town.
UTS hosted the forum with Country Education Partnership, a not-for-profit organisation that supports rural communities to enhance learning opportunities and outcomes for young people.
The forum explored the challenges young people face within their education, and creative and innovative approaches to addressing these challenges.
As the team from Country Education Partnership explains,
"The Rural Youth Ambassadors have identified the area of recruiting educators to rural and remote communities across the state. This is a key challenge in the provision of the learning that they need and desire, within their local community.
"They have begun developing a range of promotional video clips and reels that promote their communities, and the opportunities these communities provide teachers."
UTS teacher education academics Dr Don Carter, Dr Damian Maher, Dr Mun Yee Lai and Dr Keiko Yasukawa participated in the forum and were inspired by the year eleven students' ideas, dedication and enthusiasm.
As longtime champions of rural practical experience, the UTS academics were particularly interested in the ideas the Rural Ambassadors put forward to entice more student teachers to rural placements.
UTS Teacher education student Rose O’Donnell chose to undertake a placement at a rural school. Photo: supplied.
The Creative Education Partnerships Team says:
The Rural Youth Ambassadors are especially keen to promote these opportunities to preservice teachers who are undertaking their final years of the university program.
In addition, they are working with the local communities to look at ways they can support the involvement of preservice teachers undertaking practical experiences within their communities.
The Minister for Education, Sarah Mitchell has also met with the Rural Youth Ambassadors was also impressed with their ideas for bringing teachers to rural NSW.
Image credit: Gregory Heath, CSIRO. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. See source image.
