Grow-your-own teacher training programs targeting community members facing certification and career-change barriers¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

Design Studio participants proposed grow-your-own (GYO) teacher preparation programs that recruit paraprofessionals, lower-level administrators, and community-based organization workers into teaching. As one participant wrote, 'becoming an educator requires time and money that many adults may not have, which can deter people of color from becoming educators.' GYO programs were also framed as addressing onerous certification, with support for teacher trainees as a key focus.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Provide support for teacher trainees
• Alternative pathways similar to those offered for superintendents and principals

Constraints¶

Target Learners¶

• adults of color seeking career changes
• paraprofessionals and community members without certification

Target Learning Goals¶

• entry into the teaching profession
• teacher pipeline development

Affordances¶

• Inclusive Innovation Approach Toc

Related Strategies¶

• Next-step implementation plan: collaboration, accountability with metrics, and bold steps sourcing ideas from lived experience
• Grow-your-own and recruitment initiatives: alternative programs, Minority Serving Institutions, high-school pipeline programs, and district human-capital efforts to diversify the teacher workforce.
• State policy actions across the career continuum: attract, prepare, and develop/support/retain educators
• Retention supports for teachers of color: networking platforms, safe spaces, mental health resources, race-conscious mentorship, and flexible career pathways
• Grow-your-own teacher pipelines and institutionalized peer-based professional learning to build a qualified newcomer-school workforce
• Develop high-retention pathways — Grow Your Own programs and teacher residencies — to build and diversify local teacher supply
• Build an after-school/OST-to-teaching pipeline to recruit teachers of color
• Build an after-school/out-of-school-time pipeline into teaching to diversify the teacher workforce
• Diversify the educator workforce through Grow Your Own programs, scholarships, and retention supports
• Fund Grow Your Own programs to recruit more candidates of color than traditional educator preparation programs attract

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Inclusive Innovation: Increasing Recruitment and Retention of Teachers of Color — Summation of Digital Promise Design Studios with Teachers of Color. (2021). Digital Promise. https://digitalpromise.org/inclusive-innovation/