Teaching instead of emptiness

We all know it from the news in recent months and years: there is a shortage of teachers. Wherever you look, schools are short of teachers. Even if student teachers are already filling in, substitutes are hard to come by or often cannot adequately replace lessons; the quality of education suffers or lessons are canceled. Things could look different in the future: Schools will be able to hire prospective teachers to stand in for lessons on a subject-specific basis and with just a few clicks, students will gain important practical experience and pupils will emerge from substitute lessons with learning successes. This is exactly what a new founding team from the University of Kassel is working on - four students, three of them prospective teachers, are fine-tuning a placement platform to bring together young student teachers like themselves and schools. They have christened their project "Schoolutions" - a combination of "School" and "Solutions". Kay Clobes is the man behind the idea. He is studying to become a secondary school teacher and works as an all-day supervisor at a comprehensive school. "I've often taken on the task of finding substitutes myself when the school is closed," he says. "The problem is that there is no connection between schools and the university - but the student teachers are of course exactly this bridge." They often want more opportunities to gain practical experience during their studies. "So I had the idea that the whole thing could be scaled up."

In May 2023, he brought Alejandra Lukas and Eren Aslan on board, whom he already knew from his studies. At a co-creation get-together at the Science Park, the three of them received a lot of encouragement for their plan and got straight down to work. They quickly realized that the implementation would require a lot of technical expertise, so they expanded their team to include Alex Noll, who is studying for a bachelor's degree in computer science. "Being involved in the project gives me the chance to gain exactly the programming experience I need for my future career: I'm building the platform from scratch myself," he emphasizes.

The Schoolutions platform is intended to fulfill three tasks. Firstly, the team is building a database that includes student teachers in higher semesters and Kassel schools. The former enter their subjects and place of residence when registering, so they can be placed as substitutes at exactly the schools where they are needed. "If we digitize and centralize these processes of finding substitutes, it will mean an enormous reduction in bureaucracy for the school as an institution," explains Eren Aslan, a student of business education who teaches at a vocational school. "We can also ensure greater educational equality because we support schools in socially less privileged locations in particular."

Another important aim of the platform is to create a network among student teachers. "The exchange of experiences and collaboration, which are actually so important in the teaching profession, are often neglected in practice, especially as a substitute teacher," says Alejandra Lukas. She herself works as a substitute teacher alongside her secondary school teaching degree and believes that important topics such as specific lesson planning or dealing with crises or difficult situations in everyday working life could be addressed even more. The platform is intended to offer special modules for this purpose, in which students can get input and tips from experts and experienced teachers. Last but not least, the platform will also provide freely available learning and teaching materials to support students in preparing teaching units and substitute lessons. The Schoolutions team is initially expanding its database in the Kassel area. Once they have established themselves here, they can also imagine expanding their project regionally or nationally. The costs for the first project phase are covered by the Hessen Ideas Grant, which the group was able to acquire for their idea. And the team already has some ideas for the long-term financing of the project. They all agree on one thing: the service should remain permanently free of charge for students.

This article appeared in the university magazine publik 2023/4. Text: Lisa-Maxine Klein