Hundreds of teachers from India, Philippines and from other part parts of the world are reaching the classrooms of Mississippi and its rural areas on the teaching job.
Superintendents of various schools like Noxubee County, Jackson Public Schools, Meridian and Gulfport and Holmes County have employed overseas teachers on the H-1B visas. And as per MDE, there are around 451 teachers in this state with holding their degrees from outside the nation.
Noxubee County school officials started working with the agency that assist them in hiring teachers from the Philippines.
The state education department had classified this district as among 48 critical shortage areas with severe difficulty in filling the teachers’ positions. Many of the districts are struggling to get the qualified science and maths teachers.
According to the Mississippi Education Department, the policy has been modified, and it does not stop any teacher from visiting to teach in Mississippi, but they need to follow a diverse process. The overseas teachers in Mississippi should now get an expert citizen’s license, a year of teaching license is granted by the education department of Mississippi to the individuals with professional and business experience. They have to go through a teacher certification program for getting the valid license.
Those teachers who are already in Mississippi and who got the license under the foreign reciprocity would have to go through similar process whenever their present license expires.
Despite low salaries when compared to the other states, many teachers who visit here from abroad are making enough money than what they were getting at home. The starting salary of a fresher teacher in Noxubee County is around $33.715.
In the current information it was revealed that the total number of individuals who completes their graduation with education degrees from the Mississippi universities has declined since 2005 academic year, In the year 2006, around 1,282 individuals had graduated with an education degree from eight universities all over the state, when compared to around 1,091 in the year 2014, that’s around 15% of decline. This number declined even further in the year 2008 when only 1,039 individuals had graduated with the education degrees.
This decline could also be viewed in programs such as Teach for America and Mississippi Teacher Corps. These are the Mississippi University’s master program which places the graduates to high level of poverty schools all over the state.
According to the US Labor Department, in Mississippi, in the year 2013, there were many individuals on the H-1B visas in the state on IT jobs like computer system analysis, computer programmers, and software developers.
According to the information from Department of Labour, Arizona reported previous year that the schools in Arizona were also recruiting the foreign teachers for filling the vacancies, mainly in the areas like Casa Grande. Alabama also hired a couple of foreign teachers on the H-1B visas a previous year.
