Cold Hollow's 'Educator Rising' debut year a success

ENOSBURGH – A new program at Cold Hollow Career Center designed to prepare students for careers in education and human services is going well, according to program lead Emily Kimball.

Educator Rising debuted in September 2022, and currently eight students at Cold Hollow are participating.

Available to juniors and seniors, the program puts the students into Richford and Enosburg elementary schools to shadow teachers and learn how to work with younger students.

“We are using the Educator Rising curriculum as a loose framework to build conceptual understanding for students thinking about teaching as a career,” Kimball said. “But I also have quite a few students who are looking to get into the human services field as well.”

Kimball said the Richford and Enosburg elementary schools are each visited once a week, and students are paired with a teacher, interventionist or counselor depending on their specific interest.

Cold Hollow students who know they want to be teachers can also use this to figure out exactly what age groups they’d like to work with, Kimball said. 

Students who are interested in human services might explore fields like child welfare, working with people with disabilities, or drug addiction. By working with younger students, they can see if they would be a good fit working with people as a career.

Melody Tracy, a Richford senior in the program, said a typical week is a mix between curriculum learning and hands-on learning in the elementary school classrooms.

“The day before [classroom shadowing], half of the day will be Educator Rising curriculum and the other half will be a lab time to prep stuff we’ll be doing in the elementary schools,” Tracy said.

Tracy wants to work with people with disabilities and said she wasn’t sure if she wants to work in a school. By joining the program, Tracy said she could learn definitively if classroom work was for her or not.

“I knew it would give me more experience than staying at my regular high school,” Tracy said. “I would job shadow, and get college credit.”

Tracy also got the opportunity to shadow a specific special needs room in Richford Elementary, giving her a direct look into her future possible career.

The program is intended to be a two-year program, but as this is the program’s first year, juniors and seniors are mixed together so seniors can get an equal opportunity.

Kimball said through the Community College of Vermont, students will take two college courses per year that will give transferable college credits. 

The program isn’t more of a time commitment than any other program at Cold Hollow, but Kimball said the two seniors in the program are committing more time by choice to work in the schools and gain more learning experience.

Across Vermont, schools are experiencing a staff shortage, so the goal of the program is to get more students interested in the career and to work locally, hopefully keeping educators in-county. 

Kimball said the local teachers currently being shadowed have been incredibly welcoming to their younger counterparts, helping train the next generation.

“They’ve been phenomenal,” Kimball said.