<p>Teacher fair draws 1,200 job candidates</p>
<p>4:19 p.m., April 7, 2006--Recruiters from 135 school districts and consortiums across the country and around the world were kept busy interviewing hundreds of job candidates during the two-day Teacher Job Fair held Tuesday and Wednesday, April 4-5, at the Bob Carpenter Center.</p>
<p>States represented by the 335 recruiters included Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Virginia, West Virginia and the U.S. Territory of Guam.</p>
<p>Groome Mears III, director of human resources at Providence Creek Charter School in Clayton, said that his school has been a participant at the teacher job fair for several years.</p>
<p>We look for candidates who display a knowledge of the philosophy of education, an ability to reach students and a desire to teach, Mears said. The candidates here are very enthusiastic.</p>
<p>Yesterday, we met many highly qualified candidates in the fields we need to fill, such as math, science and special education, LeBright said. The candidates were great. I think UD has really prepared their students well for these kind of affairs.</p>
<p>About 63 percent of the 1,231 students and candidates attending the event were UD students or alumni.</p>
<p>Teach in Delaware Day, April 4, drew 489 candidates, while about 733 candidates attended Project Search on Wednesday, April 5, Cindy Holland, assistant director of MBNA Career Services Center, said. Candidates from other colleges and universities in the Delaware Valley area are invited to the job fair as a courtesy that is returned by other schools in the Mid-Atlantic region.</p>
<p>Several contracts or letters of intent were offered to outstanding candidates during this year's event, and invitations for onsite follow-up interviews were extended to dozens of candidates by interested school districts, Holland said.</p>
<p>Project Search has grown significantly from its humble start 28 years ago, with about two dozen school districts participating in the event held in the Perkins Student Center, Holland said. Now, Project Search has become known in the region as the premier recruitment event to attend.</p>
<p>Holland also noted that increasing numbers of school district recruiters have favorable things to say about the teacher job fair and the UD student candidates who attend.</p>
<p>They say that our teacher education programs are top notch, our students are well-prepared and that our event is extremely well-organized, Holland said. They also say that our School of Education and Career Services staff are the best to work with when it comes to recruiting activities. We are very proud of our reputation.</p>
<p>They feel they received a good education at UD, Rys said. They also see our graduates as well-prepared educators.</p>
<p>Students trained in the critical areas such as math, science, special education and English as a second language, are eagerly sought after by recruiters at teacher job fairs in the area, Rys said.</p>
<p>Students with these backgrounds have a wide variety of job options besides education, Rys said. But, they are the ones who want to teach because they enjoy education and working with children. They see themselves as making a difference in the lives of children.</p>
<p>Jolyce Harig-Blaine, a senior at Washington College in Chestertown, Md., who is majoring in human development with a certificate in elementary education, learned about the teacher job fair through the career center at her school.</p>
<p>We also had a class on interview items like professionalism, eye contact, and resume preparation, Harig-Blaine said. I have seven interviews scheduled for today, so I had to be selective because of the number of people here today and the time factor.</p>
<p>Robert B. Martinez, principal of Harry S. Truman Elementary School in Guam, said his group of four recruiters from the Guam Public School System were doing well despite the 24-hour flight that had taken them from their home at the southern end of the Mariana Islands in the Western Pacific, to Honolulu, Houston and Philadelphia. Guam, which covers some 212 square miles, is about 30 miles long and ranges from five-to-seven miles wide.</p>
<p>We like to say that Guam is where America starts its day, Martinez said. We went online to see what teaching job fairs were being offered, and we decided that we wanted to come to the University of Delaware during our stay in the continental United States.</p>
<p>The Guam Public School System includes four high schools, seven middle schools, 25 elementary schools and four other schools, and employs about 2,200 teachers, counselors, nurses and librarians to provide the educational needs of some 31,000 students in grades K-12, preschool and Head Start.</p>
<p>When candidates ask us about Guam, we tell them that it is just like any other place in the United States, and that the same things you find in mainland America can be found in Guam, Martinez said. We also tell them that English is the main language, Chamorro is the native language and the average temperature is 81 degrees.</p>
<p>Article by Jerry Rhodes
Photos by Kathy F. Atkinson </p>