Profesores Adelante! Recruiting teachers in the target language

Recruiting qualified world language (WL) educators is a continuing challenge in the United States. Limited research has been conducted on attracting potential teacher candidates. Furthermore, recruitment materials are unavailable in target languages, making it difficult for existing WL teachers, as critical advocates for the profession, to incorporate recruitment into their instruction. This study discusses the findings from the implementation of an adapted teacher recruitment curriculum created for secondary students in Early College Experience (ECE) Spanish courses. Using data from pre‐ and post‐intervention surveys, responses to writing prompts, and post‐intervention focus groups, we found that the curriculum contributed to a slight increase in student interest in becoming WL educators, as well as interest in continuing language study beyond high school. However, several teaching‐related student concerns also surfaced, most notably salary and target language ability. We discuss implications for general and WL teacher recruitment, including the importance of targeting potential WL educators in their language classrooms. The Challenge An ongoing critical shortage of world language (WL) educators in the United States threatens our ability to succeed on the global stage. How can we leverage perceptions of careers in WL education to attract more candidates to the profession? How can WL educators creatively incorporate recruitment into their curriculum?