Annual Teacher Recruitment Fair brings 14 school districts, 106 teacher candidates

More than 100 teacher candidates attended the annual Monterey County Office of Education Teacher Recruitment Fair on Saturday.

The fair aims at bringing more teachers to the county and helping people explore their options in education. “Some people initially don’t realize they want to be a teacher, but then something happens in their life that makes them realize that teaching is the one profession that touches so many lives, it as a teacher you have such a positive impact on so many young people,” says Deputy Superintendent of Monterey County Office of Education Deneen Guss.

That was the case with Jenn Linney. For years she has worked in Agriculture Technology and now wants to give back to the community by changing lives in the classroom. “I’m out here today to explore a new career opportunity. My parents were both teachers and so was my grandfather, I’m looking for fulfillment and like a said a way to give back and touch some lives,” says Linney.

As for Monterey County native Yvette Cervantes, she knew from a young age she wanted to get into this type of field. “I was probably in my elementary years when I figured out I wanted to go into something where I can help out my local community,” says Cervantes.

She went to school in Soledad for most of her K-12 education. She says her parents were primarily Spanish speakers who would look to her for help with translation. That’s one of the main reasons she is getting her credential in Speech-Language Pathology. Cervantes says, “as children we were always helping them out so they could get their messages across, but it’s not always the same. So I knew that I want to, being a Spanish-English speaker I wanted to provide that for someone else’s parents, for someone else’s family.”

For those who are on the fence about coming into the Education field Guss says aside from coming to workshops, “sit in classrooms, talk to teachers who teach at a school, really get to do some job shadowing opportunities because then you’ll get a feel rather quickly whether that’s the profession for them or not and I think most will find that it will be.”

The Monterey County Office of Education will also be holding a workshop on “How To Become a Teacher” on March 14th at 6pm at the Monterey Peninsula District Services Center in Del Rey Oaks.