Augusta University (AU) invited high school students to learn about the importance of a teaching career.
The AU College of Education and Human Development hosted its annual Future Georgia Educators Day. Students had the chance to spend the day on the AU campus to hear from current teachers, at all levels of their careers.
“We’re here to grow teachers. We’re here to encourage the profession to show what teaching really is about,” Dr. Carey Anne Cushman, Coordinator of Teacher Development and Professional Learning for the Columbia County School District (CCSD), explained for ABD. “And to celebrate the teachers who have grown us and who have touched our lives, and to hopefully become that in the future.”
According to the Learning Policy Institute (LPI), the teacher shortage has reached a critical level and continues to grow. LPI put the 2023-2024 shortage at 110,000 teachers and expected that number would grow to 200,000 by 2026.
But that tells just part of the situation. In addition to unfilled positions, LPI includes the number of teachers who are not fully certified for their teaching assignments.
“According to the latest June 2025 analyses, 48 states plus the District of Columbia employed an estimated 365,967 teachers who were not fully certified for their teaching assignments. Thirty-one states plus the District of Columbia published data on vacancies, showing 45,582 unfilled teacher positions. Together, these estimates indicate that, at a minimum, 411,549 positions were either unfilled or filled by teachers not fully certified for their assignments, representing about 1 in 8 of all teaching positions nationally,” read the LPI analysis.
Cushman said the day spent at AU was intended to show students what their career can look like if they choose the teaching profession. She said it is not necessarily all about classroom work.
“They’re going to learn different opportunities, maybe for scholarships, about different career paths in the teaching profession, because it doesn’t mean that you just have to be a teacher. You could coach, or be an administrator, or be an instructional coach, music, speech pathologist.”
Helping Cushman was Makyla Jones, a sixth-grade English Language Arts teacher at Columbia Middle School. This is just her third year teaching, giving students the view from the early years.
“I think it’s important to see those new faces. We always see the teachers who have been here since we were in school ourselves, but it’s nice to see new generations of teachers, what we can bring to the table, how we can grow from one another as well,” she said.
Nationwide, studies have identified low salaries, high stress, and a lack of respect for the profession as reasons teachers leave the profession, and fewer are entering the teaching field. Recently, particularly in Georgia and South Carolina, more attention has been given to raising teacher starting salaries.
Keri Tiedeman, who teaches third-grade reading and writing at North Harlem Elementary School, said that recognition of making a teaching career more attractive is important.
“I think our jobs are one of the most vital roles in the culture in America. And I think placing more importance on benefits and increased pay is a huge thing to talk about,” she said. “It’s needed to talk about because we are raising possibly potential doctors, the next president, the next lawyer, people that will function in our society. So really helping us as teachers with more benefits and more pay is like a huge and pivotal thing to talk about in our culture, to help us out, to teach those kids.”
Tiedeman added that, in addition to leading students into a career requiring a four-year college degree, teachers who work at technical colleges educate students to fill critical roles in trades, such as building and automotive trades.
“That’s where it all starts, from elementary. Then you have to build in middle and high school to have that foundation. It is a critical thing that we need,” she said.
Jones was the Rookie Teacher of the Year for 2023-2024. She said teaching is a career like no other.
“It’s a life-changing experience. You learn so much about yourself. You learn so much about the world. You can learn how to relate to anyone,” she said. “It’s a feeling like no other. You’re like a superhero in the classroom. And it’s just something that can’t be replicated anywhere else.”
