Opinion

It’s hiring season for the Dolores School District. “Teachers wanted!”

Every spring we are recruiting for the best teachers willing to embrace the challenges of educating our outstanding students. The most important indicator of a student’s scholastic success depends on the teacher. Knowing this, we are continually improving our schools to attract and retain high-quality educators.

In Dolores, we recognize that in order for our students to be successful, our teachers need to be successful. We have dedicated significant resources toward supporting teachers through relevant, teacher-requested professional development.

Our district has 15 days paid beyond the instructional days for professional development, professional collaboration and prep days for all teachers.

We deeply value teacher collaboration, and our small district’s single K-12 campus creates the ideal conditions for collaboration across grades and for creating continuum of success for our students.

Our small campus creates a family feel and allows us to keep class sizes small to foster personalized attention and instruction for each student.

Our district is also committed to fostering personal success for students. We do this by providing additional adult support to help students address a multitude of barriers to learning. We have additional trained professionals to support students’ social-emotional needs. We also provide students with one-on-one technology to support their learning and give our students the ability to explore the world beyond our small mountain town.

All our classrooms are fully integrating “Google classrooms,” and the technology teachers help to support student personalized learning.

Finally, in Dolores we honor the experience that teachers bring to our district. We accept up to 10 years of prior experience, then provide a half-step credit for additional years. If you are the next great teacher to hire, or you know someone who is, please apply through our website at doloresschools.org.

Thank you for taking time to read about teacher recruitment in Dolores.

Scott Cooper, Ed.D., is the superintendent of Dolores School District RE-4A. Reach him at scooper@dolores.k12.co.us and 882-7255. Visit doloresschools.org for more information. The RE-4A Education Update appears in The Journal on the first Friday of every month.