Get the Facts Out: Changing the conversation around physics teacher recruitment

The Get the Facts Out campaign is a joint effort between four societies and the Colorado School of Mines to change the conversation about high school and middle school physics, chemistry, and math teaching careers. We have developed a toolkit, based on pilot interventions that show positive results in shifting perceptions among students and faculty, and which have been shown to outperform traditional recruitment efforts, which is designed to be customizable and adaptable to the local situation. The materials and strategies include: (1) both student-facing and faculty-facing resources and a how-to guide for running interactive events, including but not limited to slide decks, clicker questions, and handouts with national survey data on retention, job satisfaction, and student loan forgiveness; (2) sample informational handouts on teacher salaries, comparisons of teacher and faculty salaries, and retirement benefits, with instructions on how to customize these with local data; and (3) brochures and posters that incorporate tested messaging strategies. In this presentation both the tools and the research and development behind them will be shared.