Educators Rising is a newly found group at Harrisburg High School, aimed to involve students who aspire to pursue a degree in the education field. The group’s mission is to “cultivate highly skilled educators by guiding young people on a path to becoming accomplished teachers, beginning in high school and extending through college and into the profession.” Mrs. Kern, a FACS teacher at Harrisburg High School, shares, “With the help from Dr. Amolins and Mr. Lape, we started Educators Rising this past fall; we have approximately eleven schools signed up for our first-ever Educators Rising State Meeting.” As part of the Educators Rising network, students have the opportunity to learn about their future career, demonstrate their knowledge about the career, and compete in state and national competitions. Currently, HHS has twenty-seven members in the club but hopes that more students will join as the years progress. The program was only started this past fall, and as a result, South Dakota's newly affiliated schools opted not to partake in any competitions this year, but they do hope to host competitions next year at their state meeting.
Through the years, over 2,400 schools have joined the Educators Rising network. This includes the 43,000 students that are signed up as future educators in the twenty-seven states that are affiliated with the program. Everyone affiliated with Educators Rising is a member of the National Coordinating Council of Career and Technical Student Organizations (NCC-CTSO). The Educators Rising Standards Committee created seven standards that “form the backbone for secondary-based ‘grow your own’ efforts across the country.” In detail, the standards provide future educators with “hands-on-teaching experience to sustain their interest in the profession and help them cultivate the skills they need to be successful educators.” Along with the seven standards, in January of 2017, Educators Rising released five micro-credentials, the micro-credentials are performance-based assessments where students demonstrate the development of skills, knowledge, and dispositions they learned while taking part of Educators Rising national program. The newfound group at Harrisburg High is eager to involve students who aspire to pursue a future career in education.