Career Website Names East Stroudsburg No. 1 Place to be a Teacher

A career website has named East Stroudsburg as the top place in the nation to be a teacher just as a shortage of educators is expected to create hot demand for new teachers in the region.

The web site Zippia, which provides career information for a wide array of professions, ranked the East Stroudsburg area as the No. 1 community for teachers. Zippia gets no argument from Terry Barry Ed.D., dean of the College of Education at East Stroudsburg University.

Barry, who began his career in education at East Stroudsburg School District, said the district and its teachers have been wonderful in working with aspiring teachers from the ESU College of Education’s Professional Development School.

“It’s an excellent school district that makes a strong commitment to education,” Barry said.

To come up with its rankings, Zippia looked at figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to gauge the average salary of teachers in an area, the average entry-level salary and how common teaching jobs are the region. The study encompassed 380 metro areas in the United States.

Zippia reported that in 2015 the average salary of a teacher in East Stroudsburg was $68,960 and the average entry-level salary was $49,810. Both were lower than some of the cities with lower rankings – such as Waterbury, Conn. and Kingston, N.Y. – but Zippia rated East Stroudsburg higher because teaching positions were more common.

Barry said the $68,960 average salary is likely a reflection of the number of veteran teachers in the region who have dedicated their careers to the community. Many of those teachers are reaching retirement age and Barry says the region is about to see a teacher shortage.

“Superintendents, not only in Monroe County, but in the entire Northeast region and even the tri-state area predict there will be significant teacher shortages coming to our area,” Barry said. “This is a tremendous time to get into teaching. I tell students at open house events that their timing couldn’t be better.”

Other communities around the nation are already seeing teacher shortages but they are relatively new to Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey, which saw teacher layoffs during the Great Recession.

“For years folks weren’t getting into teaching because of the decline in teaching positions,” Barry said. “Now the market is flipping and there is going to be a significant need for teachers.”

ESU started as a teachers’ college more than a century ago and has seen countless alumni working in East Stroudsburg communities and beyond.

William Vitulli, the principal of both Smithfield Elementary School in East Stroudsburg and the district’s cyber academy, got into education as a second career after running Vitulli’s Outdoor Sports Center in the borough for 20 years.

On December 17, Vitulli, who started as a business teacher in East Stroudsburg High School South, will receive his Doctor of Education in Administration and Leadership in a program based at ESU, run in collaboration with Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

He believes his graduate work has made him a better educator.

“It helps you find your voice, your authentic voice,” he said. “You want to explore, you want to be creative and push the envelope.”

Vitulli, who holds a master’s degree from ESU in educational administration, has worked with other ESU graduates as well as students going through the College of Education’s Professional Development School.

“They have a great program,” Vitulli said. “It’s producing high quality teachers.”

Vitulli got into teaching 13 years ago to pass on his business knowledge to young people and says the rewards have been great.

“When you get students to come back and tell you, ‘Hey you influenced my career choice, you influenced my life,’ or ‘I started a business on my own and your class helped me’ – that is tremendous,” Vitulli said.

Now he loves working with younger children to make sure they’re engaged in learning and love school.

One of the kindergarten teachers at Smithfield, Sally Yorke-Viney, Ph.D., has seen first-hand how ESU’s Professional Development School is a win-win for the university students and the community schools in which they volunteer. Those majoring in education start observing in classrooms as early as their freshman year and then work with mentor teachers when they are juniors and seniors.

ESU senior Ashley Jacobs is currently volunteering and observing two days a week in Yorke-Viney’s kindergarten class and another senior, Kimberly Hakvaag, just finished student teaching there. Both will graduate from ESU with more hands-on experience in a classroom than graduates of most teacher training programs thanks to the Professional Development School.

Yorke-Viney, who received her master’s degree in reading from ESU, had high praise for the aspiring teachers. She sees that Jacobs is learning how to work with students coming from all walks of life and how to break down tasks for kindergarteners who start school with a wide range of abilities.

“She’s learning how to adapt her instruction to meet the needs of each student,” Yorke-Viney said.

Yorke-Viney, Jacobs and Hakvaag will discuss their experience at the National Association for Professional Development Schools conference in Washington, D.C. in March.

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