Danielle Slade and Lisa Berry could be prized resources in the education world simply because they want to teach math and science.
In a field flush with language arts, history and social studies teachers, people who want to teach science, technology, engineering and math are increasingly hard to find.
“Over the last few years, science and math teachers have been some of the hardest positions to fill,” said Marvin Lott, human resources director with the Hamilton County Department of Education.
At the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, just one physics teacher graduated over the last five years. In that same time period, the university has averaged 2.4 new math teachers per year. And across all science majors, an average of just 5.8 new teachers graduated from UTC each year over the same period.
“If you look at the research, fewer people are majoring in math and science, and the ones that do are going into jobs that pay more than education,” Lott said.