A system of support: How Ontario sets its teachers up to succeed

Alternative licensure programs such as the Mississippi Teacher Corps allow people with a bachelor’s degree to earn a teaching license in the classroom through a combination of hands-on experience, coursework, and mentorship. Since its founding in 1989, the corps has placed more than 600 teachers in districts designated as “critical-shortage areas.”

A 42-day strike coordinated by the Temple University Graduate Students’ Association resulted in a new contract that raised wages and eliminated the previous wage system among other improvements to the student workers’ benefits.

The Cherry Creek School district is using apprenticeships to create a more racially diverse pipeline of K-12 educators in Colorado. High school juniors and seniors are paid to participate in the apprenticeship, and are able to earn college credit as well. This is one of the ways the district is working on having its workforce reflect its student bodies more accurately. Currently 85% of teachers are white, and half of its student body is kids of color. Now in its second year, the program has grown from an initial cohort of 12 youth apprentices to 26,

Across the U.S. many colleges and universities adapted their courses and curriculum to meet Covid safety guidelines, but many are seeing the pandemic as a catalyst for the necessary innovation, acceleration, and changes. Unity College in Maine is shifting the traditional semester system into eight, five-week terms both online and in-person, at a much lower price for students. Over in Colorado, Metropolitan State University pivoted its approach by creating a free program to retrain people who lost jobs due to the pandemic.

A partnership between Essex Tech North Shore Agricultural & Technical High School, and Local 22 trade union members is teaching students union norms and trade skills early in their career, connecting them to apprenticeships and greater career opportunities. Other states, including Maryland and Louisiana, have similar programs and students report feeling a greater sense of job security and that they can command higher pay from employers due to the expertise gained from the program.

Now Teach helps retrain older professionals for second careers in teaching, tapping candidates who might otherwise retire early to help fill staffing shortages in the education sector. The program has helped roughly 850 people earn a postgraduate certificate in education, and its trainees are more ethnically diverse than the national pool of teachers overall.

Teach Minnesota is a six-week alternative licensure program that provides hands-on classroom experience and intensive training in topics such as literacy and culturally-responsive education, allowing future teachers to earn their license more quickly and at a lower cost than in traditional degree programs. The New Teachers Project, which facilitates Teach Minnesota, has trained 37,000 teachers in 25 states and Washington, D.C.

The Brazosport school district has a unique teacher apprenticeship program which covers the cost of aspiring teachers’ coursework and pays them to teach under a mentor educator for a full year. Twenty-five new teachers graduated from the program this year and will be required to work in the district for at least three years, and research shows that about 86 percent of educators who complete similar programs are still teaching in the same district after three years.

Career and Technical Education schools teach teens a mix of academic and technical requirements so they can choose to pursue a career in the trades industry upon graduation.

New multilingual and multicultural education programs like the one at Arizona State University help prepare future teachers to meet the needs of Latino students and lessen the teacher-retention crisis in the state.