Ad Council and TEACH.org recently partnered with global advertising and marketing agency DigitasLBi to launch a new public service campaign that advocates for the education profession and encourages college students to consider jobs in teaching. College students often have negative perceptions of the teaching profession — seeing the position as boring, restricted and conventional. With their campaign, Ad Council and TEACH.org hopes to attract and ultimately recruit a diverse population of high-performing college students to be the next leaders in the education field.

“Teachers are always telling me how they have the most creative, stimulating, fulfilling job and they wish it weren’t so misperceived,” said Zachary Levine, executive director of TEACH.org. “Correcting those misperceptions and recruiting a great teacher into every single classroom is the most powerful way to have a world-class system that helps all children achieve their potential, regardless of zip code."

The collaborative campaign comes during a time where the United States is facing a national shortage of teachers in its classrooms. Today, America needs 60,000 more teachers per year, and that number is projected to grow to 110,000 by 2021, an unprecedented shortage which will impact nearly 10 million students.

The new campaign showcases the incredible opportunities a teaching career can offer.The campaign was created pro bono by DigitasLBi and presents unique stories of how teachers found innovative ways to teach their students, contrasted by the mundane stories of their friends in entry-level positions. Through the campaign — which highlights that teachers have better work stories — Ad Council and TEACH.org hope to encourage more black and Hispanic college students to consider teaching as a career.

“We want to get the message out. Teaching today is an amazingly creative, stimulating job. And it is also serving an increasingly diverse student population, so we need a more diverse teaching force to determine what and how they will learn in the 21st century. "We know our student body is 35 percent black or Hispanic, but only 15 percent of teachers are black or Latino and less than 2 percent of teachers are black males. That’s a huge setback to the school system, because research shows that all students benefit from having black teachers. For instance, there’s a new study from North Carolina showing the powerful effect of even one black teacher on black students, increasing their graduation rates…"

The two organizations recognize that people also look at the teaching profession unfavorably because of salary, career trajectory and lack of prestige. However, Ad Council and TEACH.org explain that the teaching profession has changed over the years and is not exactly what people remember from when they were in the classrooms themselves. The job has evolved and today, it allows teachers to be leaders from day one and to be creative, innovative and collaborative. The teaching profession also allows educators to develop leadership skills and to help others.

The Ad Council brings together the most creative minds in advertising and media to address the most worthy causes. Its innovative, pro bono social good campaigns raise awareness. Created by the U.S. Department of Education and Microsoft, TEACH.org is the nation’s public-private partnership to rebrand the new teaching profession as a top career choice and recruit the next generation of diverse, talented teachers needed to transform our education system and enable all our children to thrive in the 21st century.

See the ad campaign in the video above, and visit TEACH.org for more information about the campaign and to access additional resources.