TEACHING HUB: HOW CAN WE MAKE UTAH A WORLD-CLASS EDUCATION DESTINATION?

• Author: Bruening, Ari
• Position: SILICON SLOPES

Ask any one of the 42 percent of Utah teachers who quit within their first five years why they left, and you'll hear a variety of reasons: "I didn't have enough support and mentorship." "I couldn't make enough to provide for my family." "I didn't have the resources I needed to succeed." "I left to raise my own family." While the reasons may vary, the story remains the same: Too many Utahns feel that teaching is not a justifiable career path.

More and more, education is the key to escaping poverty, successfully attacking life's challenges and making positive contributions to society. Utah has great, welleducated workers--we're also rapidly increasing graduates in STEM fields and improving our outcomes across a variety of metrics--but we're small and need to punch well above our weight in order to keep up. Many rapidly growing tech companies are forced to expand elsewhere because they can't find a workforce at home.

That means now, more than ever, we need graduates who have the skills to excel in the knowledge economy. We need Utah to become a world-class education destination. That's hard to do when we face challenges like a teacher shortage that exceeds a thousand teachers each year.

Education is not a simple issue--and there may not be a "silver bullet" solution that will change things overnight-but with a little collaboration and teamwork, there are things we can do to improve education in our state. That's why Envision Utah is bringing people together to identify and implement strategies that will really move the needle on educational outcomes, so we'll have more graduates--and more diverse graduates--who are ready for the economy of tomorrow.

We brought together the brightest minds in the state on education, ensuring we had representation from a diversity of groups and policymakers, and agreed on a set of strategies that will really improve outcomes. Those strategies start as early as birth and continue until more Utahns graduate with a postsecondary education:

1. Talk to your baby. Education starts with our own children. Parents have a huge responsibility to teach their children, and that begins on day one. By the time your child turns four, nearly 80 percent of her brain will be developed. The amount of language she hears and the interactions she has with you in those first years will shape her ability to learn later in life. The more talking, the better. Parents and caregivers can use everyday moments to build their kids' brains and...