TeachNYC

New York City Public Schools (NYCPS) is the largest school district in the country, serving more than 1 million students from 3-K through grade 12. The district's 1,600+ schools require a robust recruitment effort to bring educators into the system, and the TeachNYC.net website is the first stop for aspiring NYC educators.

With declining rates of recruitment, the district set an ambitious goal to increase the teacher-to-student ratio, and embarked on a website redesign project to help make that ratio a reality.

Working closely with the client, we were able to understand one of the key factors that sets NYC Public Schools apart from other districts: instead of only targeting fully qualified educators ready to step into a classroom, the district provides many varied opportunities for aspiring educators to obtain the credentials they need for qualification. NYCPS meets educators earlier in the process, and offers pathways to teaching beyond the traditional routes.

The biggest obstacle, we found, was awareness: educators didn’t necessarily know about these opportunities, or where to find information about them. With this in mind, we set out to chart all possible pathways, and build a content strategy that pointed each user down their correct path. This included merging content from three different websites and restructuring content pertaining to the various pathways.

After spending many sessions together to untangle the various programs and opportunities provided by NYCPS, we landed on a simple framework for starting to organize content: we divided the website into information for people who are already-certified teachers, and for teachers who are not yet certified. Using this framework, we were able to create more understandable pathways through the website and into application portals, as well as create an interactive pathfinder that allows the user to get incredibly detailed in finding the information most relevant to their particular situation.

We supported the certified/not certified structure visually by establishing themes that connect related information. Pages with information pertaining to uncertified individuals are presented with mostly blue styling, while information for certified users is styled with green. This color paradigm can be seen in the navigation, in other wayfinding elements across the site and even in the list of applications as a way to help users understand what information will be most helpful to them.

The well-established NYCPS brand served as the foundation for the visual identity of the TeachNYC site. Our brief stipulated that the website needed to adhere to the brand standards for color and typography, but from there we had a lot of room to play. In addition to the visual theming that supports the content structure, we created collages and textured elements to give a hand-made, crafted touch, which visually speaks to the idea of an educator creating their own path to teaching. Special interactive touches were also designed to help give the user structure and direction as they navigate the site.

Creating a more unified and consistent experience to present all of the opportunities NYCPS has to offer has resulted in higher traffic and strong application numbers. And, as a result of the trust we built with the client throughout the project, we’re continuing to expand and augment the suite of NYCPS informational websites. We’re excited to continue this partnership to learn, grow, and increase engagement and quality teacher recruitment.