Emporia State'selected Master Teachers tell senators K-12 faces recruitment, pay, literacy and AI challenges

Seven Kansas Master Teachers visited the Kansas Senate Education Committee to describe classroom practice, recruitment challenges and program supports they said are needed to attract and keep teachers.

Greg (Emporia State University) introduced the 2025 class of master teachers and said the Master Teachers program, established at Emporia State University in 1954 and funded by grants from the Bank of America Foundation, selected seven teachers this year from a pool of 32 applications. He said the class represented geographic diversity across the state.

Each master teacher spoke briefly about classroom experience and local challenges. Andrew Taylor, a biology teacher and robotics coach at Olathe Northwest High School, described integrating engineering and science and student outreach through robotics. Jennifer Gillespie, a social studies teacher at Maxville High School, said recruiting mathematics teachers in small western Kansas districts was a persistent problem: "Probably the biggest challenge we have is recruiting teachers to certain areas of mathematics. We've been looking for a math teacher for several years now and have been unable to find one."

Several senators and teachers discussed teacher shortages, compensation and workload. Casey Engel, a 25-year teacher in Blue Valley who said she had completed a master's thesis at Yale, described cultural changes in students and noted pay concerns: "I defended my master's thesis at Yale, and I just, broke $75,000 a year," a figure she cited to illustrate pay compression for experienced teachers. Committee members and teachers emphasized rural recruitment challenges, heavier course loads in smaller districts and the need to make academic pursuits feel rewarding to students.

Panelists also discussed classroom use of generative AI and strategies to preserve student creativity and assessment integrity. Engel described using lockdown browsers for timed writing and using AI-generated text as a classroom critique tool. Jessica Madinger, a high school English teacher, described assignments that used podcasts and interviews to connect students with diverse perspectives and to encourage original work.

Elementary and music teachers highlighted early literacy and engagement. Heather Newkirk, a third-grade teacher who obtained LETRS literacy training, urged widespread literacy instruction improvement: "...the research that's coming out on teaching students how to read, is just monumentally different than how I learned it in college. And I think it's very important that anyone, retakes those courses and learns better ways to teach our kids how to read because we all know there's a literacy crisis right now and we've got to make sure that these kids are reading and getting books in kids' hands."

Senators thanked teachers for classroom work and for mentoring students toward careers in teaching. Greg said the Master Teachers program involved recommendations and a selection committee that included education stakeholders such as the Kansas Association of School Boards and the Kansas National Education Association (KNEA). The committee closed with applause and said it would recognize the teachers on the Senate floor at a later date.

Ending: The master teachers' testimonials underscored longstanding recruitment pressures in rural districts, concerns about compensation and workload, and calls for broader literacy training and classroom strategies to address generative AI and student engagement.