Things change. And over the past few years it seems like things have been changing at an accelerated pace, especially in education. At MDR, we knew this likely had an impact on the organizational structure of school districts and new positions may have been added to reflect emerging needs. To ensure that you can target your campaigns to reach these new audiences, we conducted a study to analyze district job titles and add them to our database. We uncovered 35 new job titles and 11 title changes at the district level, reflecting the current educational environment.
In upcoming blog posts, we’ll look at each category of new titles, describe their roles and responsibilities, and share some ideas for the types of products and services they may be interested in learning more about.
Let’s look first at “Student & Staff Health & Wellness” positions. After navigating the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the increase in student mental health needs, school districts are providing more support for student, teacher, and staff health with “School Wellness Coordinator” emerging as one of the new district positions. This new role does more than teach health class. They develop and oversee wellness programs and initiatives, create and roll out health-based curriculum, respond when necessary to health crises, and develop nutrition and physical fitness programs.
In some instances, the School Wellness Coordinator also oversees mental health support for the district; others have another new position: “Mental Health Coordinator.” This individual, who might have a master’s degree in counseling or psychology, helps develop strategies to support the mental health of students, school faculty and staff, and families. They coordinate mental health services and prevention programs as well as oversee support for children dealing with mental health challenges, stress, or trauma.
Individuals in these two new positions and others in health and wellness might be interested in your social emotional learning programs, school nutrition and wellness initiatives, mental health assessments, school health supplies, and any other resources that support student, staff. and family health and wellness.
On a lighter note, but “health” related, district coaching titles have also changed with many adding “Esports Coaches.” Esports have exploded in K-12 schools, especially high schools. In fact, since 2018, when the National Federation of State High School Associations first recognized Esports as an official sport, more than 8,600 high schools have started video-gaming teams*, which help students develop soft skills, such as communication and teamwork, as well as put them on the path to careers in tech-related industries. Just like other coaches, an Esports Coach trains their team, helping them to build the skills to succeed in competition.
Esports coaches may be interested in recognition and award programs, uniforms, gaming computers and software, furniture designed for gaming, and pretty much anything else to support their teams as they compete.
All the new and updated titles are now available in our continually updated database of nearly 6 million K-12 personnel at more than 13,000 U.S. school districts. Check out all the new titles here and use MDR’s ConnectED Cloud ListBuilder to precisely target the educator decision-makers who will be interested in your products and services.
Come back next month for a deep dive into another trend in new school district positions!
