Abstract
As teacher shortages continue to increase in the wake of the pandemic and an increased number of retirement-eligible teachers take advantage of the benefits of retiring, more communities and school districts are looking toward their local university for teacher education pathway programs to attract and prepare paraprofessionals (paraeducators) as a certified teacher while remaining in the community and employed within the school as a paraprofessional or teacher-of-record on a restricted license. Traditionally, these types of grow your own (GYO) programs attract and admit non-traditional candidates who have not attended school in more than five years and have other life factors that require a network of support not always found in a traditional teacher education program.
TopBackground
Recruitment and retention have been long-standing concerns in teaching. Universities, districts, and educational agencies have responded to this concern with various approaches focused mainly on retention, including, professional development, district mentoring programs for the novice teacher, and negotiation decisions that provide additional support and compensation to the teacher, but recruitment of teachers beyond the university college-to-classroom program has been limited until recently. Now, “Grow Your Own” (GYO) programs are flourishing throughout the nation. The need for these types of alternative teacher education preparation programs is only increasing due to the number of teachers leaving or retiring from the profession in response to the current pandemic. GYO programs are a growing recruitment strategy to diversify the teacher workforce (Alvarez, 2017) and to create a teacher workforce that is reflective of the diverse student population where the candidate will serve as a classroom teacher. This approach to teacher education is a sustainable pipeline for developing the next generation of educators and is a versatile approach for universities and districts to collaborate and grow teachers who are trained to meet district needs in shortage areas.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Self-Efficacy: An individual’s belief in their ability to achieve and succeed at a task they take on.
Academic Advising: A personalized way for a candidate to work with an academic advisor to make academic decisions to obtain their educational and career goals.
Reflective Coaching: A candidate-centered process in which a mentor and a novice teacher examine and reflect on plans, implementation, and feedback to set goals for future experiences and continuous growth.
Mentoring: Interactions between a novice and experienced teacher with a focus on relationship building, reflective coaching, and supporting retention.
Grow Your Own Program: A program to recruit aspiring teachers reflective of the student population and community for which they serve.
Interdependence: The dependence of two or more people on each other.
Teacher Retention: The percentage of teachers in one year who are still teaching in the same school the following year.