A new promotional video released this week launched the sixth annual “Thank Alabama Teachers Month.”
"No matter where you live in Alabama, rural counties, inner cities, you should have the opportunity to grow up and pursue whatever your life's dream is," Dr. Eric Mackey, Alabama State Superintendent of Education, said in the video.
At an event hosted by Tiffany Marron, the principal of Vestavia Hills Elementary, Liberty Park had 500 students and nearly 100 teachers in attendance. Mackey presented the department's new logo and promotional video, along with a message encouraging people to consider teaching as a career.
"You can go an hour from here and get in some of the more rural parts of the state, and we actually have a pretty severe shortage," Mackey said, according to WVM13.
In a CBS 42 report, he explained, "If you want to invest in the lives of young people, if you want to do something where you feel every day at the end of the day, ‘I may be tired, but I know I did something that made a difference in people’s lives,’ then be a teacher."
An Alabama Daily News report said, "750 elementary, 350 early-childhood and 270 collaborative elementary special education positions at the start of this school year could not be filled with certified teachers."
"We do have some cases where people might be teaching elementary school on an emergency certificate. We're grateful for those adults who've come along and they've said I've got a college degree. I think maybe I want to try teaching. And so I get an emergency certificate, but that might mean we have somebody who's trained in accounting, which is a perfectly good field, but they're trying to teach, you know, second-grade math," Mackey said at the event.
The event in Vestavia included a video sent by Governor Kay Ivey, which was later shared on social media.
“Draw a picture, write a note, or simply say thank you. I was once a teacher, and those two little words can mean the world,” Ivey said before calling for her dog Huntley to come.
“Alabama teachers, thank you from Huntley and me. May God continue to bless each of you and the great state of Alabama."
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