About 65 are joining the division this year.
Fredericksburg City Public Schools welcomed 65 new teachers this week, and the Advance caught up with some of them at Carl’s Ice Cream on Monday afternoon.
Karish Johnson will be joining the team at Walker-Grant Middle School as a counselor. She said she’s taught for years in Hampton City Schools but sought the position in Fredericksburg to be closer to her parents and grandparents.
“I love the community here,” she said.
Johnson said she’s especially looking forward to being among the first staff to work in the new middle school, which is scheduled for completion in July of 2025.
The teachers toured the construction site in the Idlewild neighborhood on Monday.
“It’s beautiful,” Johnson said. “It’s like a campus.”
Xavier Griffin joined the division earlier this year and taught summer school. Starting in August, he’ll be teaching kindergarten at Lafayette Elementary School.
His ID badge has already been decorated with stickers by his summer school students, and he said he’d promised them they’d still be there in August.
A career-switcher, who comes from a career in technology, Griffin said he’s “really excited to bond with the kids.”
He said he wanted to work specifically with younger grades because male teachers and teachers of color are underrepresented at these levels. Research shows that all students benefit from having teachers of color.
“During my time here this past semester, it was great to see the impact I had as a person,” Griffin said. That convinced him that switching careers to teaching was the right thing to do.
At Carl’s, Griffin was chatting with Leslie Sanker, who has worked as a substitute teacher at Hugh Mercer Elementary for two years and has been hired full-time to teach 5th grade.
“As a substitute, you need your bag of tricks, so I’ve been building up to this,” Sanker said, noting that she’s looking forward to having her own classroom and implementing some of the strategies she’s observed and read about during her years as a substitute.
Heather Ayers, who is in her seventh year as a teacher, comes to FCPS from Stafford County schools. She’ll be teaching 4-year-olds in the division’s preschool program.
She said she loves the diversity of Fredericksburg schools and is looking forward to teaching her students that “they matter, no matter who they are or where they come from.”
Human Resources director Sue Keffer said it’s still a tough market for teachers, but that this year is “a little better than last year.”
She said the division has been working with iTeach, a fast-track program to teacher licensure that is supported by the Virginia Department of Education, to fill hard-to-staff positions in special education and foreign language.
The 2024-25 school year starts in 10 days, but the division isn’t finished hiring teachers, Keffer said.
“We had another acceptance offer last night,” she said. “There’s never a slow season.”
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