In The News: College of Education
UNLV provides alternative methods for those interested in becoming educators through its Paraprofessional Pathways Project and the Accelerated Alternative Route to Licensure. Both are fast-track methods to become licensed teachers, and allow students to work and earn an income while completing their studies.
As students across Clark County returned to school for the fall semester earlier this week, the Clark County School District continues to grapple with filling classrooms with teachers. CCSD is experiencing a decades-long teacher shortage and has not been fully staffed since the early 1990s. The Public Education Foundation is trying to fill the gap. In response to this shortage, PEF is partnering with UNLV to offer Teacher FastTrack, an accelerated, no-cost program to recruit and retain teachers.
Foreign exchange teachers, recent college graduates, former charter school teachers and out-of-state transplants are among the 1,400 new teachers joining the Clark County School District (CCSD) this school year, which begins Aug. 12.
With the start of the school year around the corner, the Clark County School District says they have 1,078 vacancies. The Teacher FastTrack Program is working to make a dent in that statistic through the Public Education Foundation. Tuesday they celebrated 45 newly licensed teachers, 40 of those teachers are headed to CCSD.
The Clark County Education Association held a new hire orientation Tuesday morning to welcome new staff as the 2024-2025 school year begins in less than two weeks. Aimee Fuller was all smiles as she greeted the new teachers at the event. Fuller has been a CCSD teacher since 2006 and said every year is different.
UNLV understands the pathway to teaching is not the same for everyone. That’s why the university is trying to make it easier early on by offering different options to those interested in teaching.
It’s been a year of missteps, miscalculations, confusion, delays, glitches, and frustration after the botched launch of the simplified FAFSA, which has prevented financial aid packages from being awarded to students with ample time to make plans for their future.
Five defeats and no wins - that's how the first professional season for basketball star Caitlin Clark started. She didn't score as she usually does and rarely found a rhythm with her teammates. And the criticism of the 22-year-old player is already piling up - with no grace period: Is she too small for the professional league? Too delicate? Too weak? Can she not handle the pressure of expectations? Is there racism behind all the hype about the white player, which deliberately overlooks black players with greater talent?
For the longest time, we’ve thought about the marriage between sports and educational institutions on a competitive level. From Friday Night Lights with high school football, to Saturday afternoons in college, to the madness in March with NCAA basketball. The representation of schools in the form of athletic competition has always united student bodies, but even more so, has been an added source of entertainment.
On Friday, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority announced an unprecedented new sponsorship program: $100k to each of the Las Vegas Aces players, from superstars to rookies. On the heels of that announcement, however, the WNBA confirmed that it would be investigating this sponsorship deal for possible violation of league rules. But why? Today, executive producer Sonja Cho Swanson talks with professor Nancy Lough, co-director of the UNLV Sports Innovation Institute, about the complicated rules of endorsements, sponsorships, and pay-to-play in pro sports — and how we can get to pay parity for female athletes.
Las Vegas Aces star A'ja Wilson says members of her team had no idea about the surprise they were set to receive on Friday. "I don't think people really understand, but we didn't know what was going on," Wilson said after practice at the team's facility in Henderson on Monday. "Our city is behind us 100% and they're giving us what we deserve."
Where’s the best place to look for an aspiring teacher? These days, school leaders are launching talent searches inside their own buildings. In Nevada, districts are increasingly turning to their support staff members – such as bus drivers, substitute teachers, cafeteria workers – as possible recruits.
