Helping Unconventional Students
SCC Facing Shortage of ‘Nontraditional’ Instructors
BY MARY KATE MURPHY, SLI REPORTER
Every year, Sandhills Community College helps more than 400 people get their education back on track after years, if not decades, out of the classroom.
But Sandhills’ College and Career Readiness department is now faced with a shortage of nontraditional instructors to go with those nontraditional learners.
The department is not unlike other schools and colleges across the country now struggling to keep staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. But it’s even harder to recruit teachers with severe funding limitations.
Part of the community college’s mission is to build the local workforce by equipping its students with the skills most sought-after by employers in the area. But technical skills might as well be a pipe dream for the significant number of adults without a high school diploma or basic English literacy.
“There’s a lot of jobs out there. Employers need workers,” said Niole Worley, director of Sandhills’ College and Career Readiness department. “We help individuals that don’t have a high school diploma, who are not eligible for career or job opportunities or even higher-level education.”
College and Career Readiness courses help fill a critical gap in the local workforce pipeline by providing basic education to anyone with the time to devote to it. The courses are all free of tuition or fees for students.
The vast majority of the program’s students arrive with reading and math skills below ninth grade level. Worley estimated that as few as 5 percent come into the program at a high school level.
Deb Sikes, a coordinator at Sandhills’ Hoke Center in Raeford, said that the program needs instructors for the gamut of its offerings: adult basic education, high school equivalency, and English language acquisition.
“As most educators would say, teachers don’t go into teaching for the money. They have a passion for helping others, and that passion is continuously charged when they see their students succeed,” said Sikes.
“Such success is gratifying in the CCR program, where you help change lives, one student at a time. There is no greater sense of accomplishment than seeing an adult student change the direction of their and their family’s lives.”
Classes are offered both during the day and in the evenings at Sandhills’ campuses in Pinehurst, Robbins and Raeford.
The program draws the bulk of its funding from federal grants through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. Where the college’s traditional course offerings are supported by state funding based on the number of students enrolled, College and Career Readiness classes receive a much lower level of funding through that system.
As a result, the program only hires instructors on a part-time basis, and has lost staff to other job opportunities over the last two years.
“It really needs to be someone who is interested in working with individuals most in need,,” Worley said. “Because our funding stream is quite regulated and tight, we can’t quite compete with the amount of money our faculty in the college level classes earn.”
The primary requirement for instructors in the Career and College Readiness program is a bachelor’s degree in any field. Certified teachers are welcomed, but Sandhills is open to applicants from a variety of backgrounds: whether retired educators or younger professionals interested in trying out a career change or simply giving back to the community.
“Our instructors, as part-time instructors with other careers in some cases, come from all different walks of life,” said Worley. “Some just have a passion and they come in and learn how to teach. We pair them with a seasoned instructor.”
Instructors who don’t already have an N.C. Community College System-recognized credential when they start are expected to earn one within two years, unless they hold an advanced degree in education. With help from the Sandhills Community College Foundation, the college funds that training for its CCR instructors.
“We try to foster a team culture in CCR, where our teachers work together to support and learn from one another,” Sikes said. “We know this creates the kind of support our students need to be successful.”
Worley said that there isn’t a specific number of positions open; it’s more a matter of making sure that there’s an instructor for every class. Some of the program’s instructors teach three hours two nights a week as a secondary job, while others teach from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m. four days each week.
Some even co-teach, splitting a full-time class between them. Classes run year round, with new students starting eight times a year.
“That’s about as managed as we can be without enrollment while still trying to meet the need,” said Worley. “The need is ongoing because we’re constantly trying to meet the needs of the students. Sometimes we need to make a shift in what we’re offering and we need teachers who are willing to also be flexible.”
Currently the program is struggling mostly to staff its Hoke County classes, as well as to recruit substitutes who can step in to supervise testing, since regular instructors aren’t permitted to test their own students.
Anyone interested in becoming a College and Career Readiness instructor can apply for the “Year-Round Application Pool – College and Career Readiness Instructor (Basic Skills), Continuing Education” position found at sandhills.edu/employment-sandhills-community-college.
“We have a lot of retired educators in this area, we have a lot of people who care. They just may not know this opportunity exists,” said Worley.
“Our goal is to bring more individuals into our local workforce who have that credential and can go beyond that high school equivalency to get that higher education and become much more employable.”
For more information about the Adult Basic Education and High School Equivalency programs in Moore County, contact Beckie Kimbrell at kimbrellr@sandhills.edu or (910) 695-3779; for Hoke County, contact Deb Sikes at sikesd@sandhills.edu or (910) 848-4300.
For information about English Language Acquisition classes, contact Isabel Cain at cainm@sandhills.edu or (910) 246-4975. To complete an online orientation request form, visit sandhills.edu/ccr.
Contact Mary Kate Murphy at (910) 693-2479 or mkmurphy@thepilot.com.
