FTA (Future Teachers of America) has returned to WHS to offer the opportunity for students to explore what it would be like to be a teacher in the future. FTA does things like vote for teacher of the month, and they go to several different events to learn about teaching.

  “FTA has shown me that I really want to become a teacher and work in the education industry,” sophomore Aleanah Yoder said.

   While FTA is a group for people who wish to become teachers, they also attended a trip where they explored many different career paths, such as construction, technology and clothing design.

    “Learning about the different careers was a cool experience but it was really fun walking around and talking with my friends,” freshman Olivia Lastrada said.

   FTA is a great experience and it’s really interesting for people to get to experience new things. 

   “We talked about school websites and it’s all completely different. In America we use an Infinite Campus and in Germany we use something called Microsoft Teams so it was neat to learn how everything was different,” junior foreign exchange student Hazal Uelker said.

   Their most recent trip to the University of Central Missouri was a trip for students to pursue a career path that suits them well. They offered classes about different subjects and different careers. 

   “It was fun getting to learn about the different careers and what jobs I could pursue in the future,” Yoder said.

   FTA is an opportunity for everyone to experience a future career in teaching. Several people hope that FTA can bring in more people to help with a teacher shortage in America. As of today the state of Missouri has an equivalent of 3,500 open vacancies, mostly in lower education. The leading cause for the teacher shortage is low pay, lack of support, lack of administrative support and difficulty to fill in areas such as math, science and English. Some ways to help solve the teacher shortage could be a higher starting salary, improving overall teaching environments. Better support and mentorship and getting more students involved in things such as FTA