The interest of becoming a teacher is growing every day. Educators Rising helps those who one day want to teach in their own classrooms.

As second semester draws nearer, students in the school’s Educators Rising program are preparing for the State competition that will take place at the Beardmore Event Center in Bellevue on Feb. 20.

There, students will be able to compete in several different categories from children’s literature to lesson planning and delivery.

Other categories include TED Talks as well as showcase videos of the student teaching in a classroom following with a presentation.

The students will try new methods this year to find better results in this year’s competition.

The group plans to practice most days after school, hoping that their performance at State will qualify them for Nationals.

Nationals will take place at the Hyatt Regency in Dallas, June 22 through June 25.

“Educators rising is important to me because I think teachers have the most important job in the country,” program manager Lucy Berrier said. “We need quality teachers that are fully prepared to be in classrooms so that all students are able to receive the education they need to be successful.”

Human Growth and Educators Rising teacher Jana Georgius said that alumna Carmel Notario started it all. She wanted to be a state officer Georgius’ first year, so she dove in and learned all about the club for her.

“I’ve always been scared to take chances and risk in everything, but when I joined Ed Rising all of my doubts were erased,” Notario said. “I never saw it as something I must be, but I wanted to show myself that risk could lead to greater success and it did.”

This year’s state officer is senior Danny Le. Le who is the school’s vice president of communications for Educators Rising. He got involved with the program during his sophomore year. After being inspired by a majority of his teachers, Le made the decision that he wanted to follow in their footsteps.

“I decided to run for vice president because Carmel Notario was the secretary of Educators Rising and she got so many opportunities and experienced great moments so, I decided I wanted that too,” Le said.