Teacher, Teacher! South Dakota Looks to Connect With Teaching Candidates

If you're looking to become an educator or maybe you are already a teacher looking for a new opportunity, you might want to give South Dakota a look, because we're hiring.

South Dakota, like many other states across the nation, is looking to hire a few good teachers in the coming months for next year's school year.

Dakota News Now reports that the South Dakota Teacher Career Fair on Thursday, (February 20) attracted over 100 schools, and several different school districts searching for educators.

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The purpose of the annual Teachers Career Fair is to help open up the lines of communication between job seekers and school districts looking for people with the desire to teach.

Tea Area Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment, Samantha Walder told Dakota News Now, “We also have many teachers that end up moving for other reasons. Whether it’s for career advancement, or a spouse is moving. So we want to make sure that we have a pipeline of candidates ready, despite the fact we don’t have many openings at this time.”

The South Dakota Teacher Career Fair ends up being a rather competitive environment between school districts as they all compete for the same candidates, during a time when teachers are being asked to do more and more.

One thing that helps to make teaching in South Dakota so attractive to prospective candidates is the great quality of life our state has to offer.  However, there can be a few drawbacks, one being that teaching candidates have been known to have a difficult time finding the exact type of job they want in South Dakota.

As Walder told Dakota News Now, "Sometimes have to get people to commit to stay in South Dakota, because of the difficulty in finding exactly the job that you want, in the district that you want. We know that our colleges in South Dakota are producing wonderful students who are coming out, ready to teach, and hit the ground running. We’d like to keep them here in South Dakota.”

In the end, the South Dakota Teacher Career Fair is all about making connections and creating a pipeline of qualified candidates for the various school districts throughout the state as they look to fill jobs available now and in the future.

Source: Dakota News Now