The nation’s education system currently faces a critical shortage of professionally certified teachers, and Northeast Florida is not exempt from the problem.

About 1,400 classroom teachers in the area only have temporary teaching certificates, according to the regional coordinator of the North Florida Personel Development Partnership who founded a program aimed to do something about it.

Dr. Kathryn Krudwig started the Educator Preparation Institute at UNF last November to help alleviate the problem in the local school districts.

UNF offers many surprises to its students on a daily basis: free T-shirts on the Green, free scantrons in the Student Government office and no classes on a Tuesday in honor of Veterans Day. But not all of its surprises are pleasing, including the holds on students’ accounts that appear just hours before registration.

It never fails. Students check their accounts a week before and are in good standing for registration. They check it again, just to make sure, and still are set to register. Hours before they’re scheduled to add classes, a hold is placed on their accounts for failing to pay a late library book fine or to release emergency information for the Code Red system.

They don’t find out until it’s too late.

Excitement is circulating across the country with the recent election of a new president, but as the days in November continue to unfold, Americans need to stop and take a minute to recognize what makes the nation so great.

Thanksgiving is Nov. 27, and the United States has come a long way since the Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving in 1621.

Even though the nation is in a time of uncertainty – with the rollercoaster economy and war in Iraq – the American people still have plenty to be grateful for.

America is better off than most nations around the world.