CEDAR HILL, Texas — As students entered Christopher Hawkins’ Plummer Elementary classroom for the first day of class, they found a room decorated with superheroes.

Hawkins laid out expectations for his new first grade students and tried to make them feel comfortable in their new class. The Cedar Hill ISD teacher has 22 years of educational experience. However, in all those 22 years, this was Hawkins’ first day as a public school teacher leading his own classroom.

“This is actually a dream,” said Hawkins, as he got his students ready to go to lunch.

Hawkins has spent the last several years as a teacher’s assistant at Plummer, and before that, he worked in several other education jobs in private schools in the Dallas area. However, he’d never finished the degree or the professional certifications to become a full-time public school teacher.

Then, during the previous school year, Hawkins said he was called into the principal’s office and got an offer that signaled his teaching dreams would finally come true.

“I did, I cried, because I so longed to do this for a long period of time,” said Hawkins. “I actually thought about this several years ago and was like, ‘why isn’t something like this happening?’”

A new program Cedar Hill ISD just launched with this new school year. In order to combat the teacher shortage, the district started offering its paraprofessionals and support staff members, who have a drive to become full-time teachers, the opportunity to take on their own classroom early while the district pays for them to finish their degree and get all the certifications.

“Invest in your own and they’ll continue to come and work for you,” said Plummer Elementary Principal Dr. Shanta Mackey.

In exchange for the help, the teachers in training agree to stay on as teachers in the district for at least three years beyond the conclusion of their education.

Dr. Mackey said it made sense for their school and others in the district that are still actively trying to fill teacher openings, even with the school year now in session. She said for the past year Hawkins and its other paraprofessionals have been stepping up to help through that shortage, and many of them were ready to take on this new challenge and pursue their own futures.

“We had a lot of vacant classrooms and he just stepped in,” said Dr. Mackey. “Filled in the classroom, built relationships with the scholars, definitely saw something more.”

While leaders know the program will probably just be one piece in solving the teacher shortage challenge, they hope it will prove a successful one. 

As he settled in on the first day of school he’s been dreaming of for decades, Hawkins said it was certainly successful in his eyes. He said the superhero pictures on his classroom walls are more than just decorations. They’re a message to that new class that he’s been training to lead his entire career.

“I chose superheroes because that’s who they are to me. They’re superheroes,” said Hawkins.