Harnessing the power of career changers to address teacher shortages

Who will teach? That’s a question school administrators across the country have been asking, as urban, rural, and suburban districts face a worsening teacher shortage. And it was the subject of Kappan’s November 2021 issue, in which multiple authors discussed how districts are looking to their own communities for teachers, launching grow-your-own programs that recruit paraeducators, teaching assistants, and students into preparation programs and provide support as they enter the classroom.

For more than 30 years, Golden Apple Foundation has been engaged in a similar effort through our Scholars program, where we prepare undergraduates to teach in schools of need across Illinois. We provide tuition assistance; academic, social, and emotional support; placement help; and mentoring, from college through those challenging early years of teaching, to ensure teachers spend at least five years in schools that need them the most.

In the fall of 2019, Illinois had 1,800 vacant teaching positions in both urban and rural communities throughout the state. Around this time, I got in my car to travel to rural communities to spread the word about our Scholars program in the hopes of attracting more applicants from these areas who would commit to teaching in their hometowns. However, when I met with superintendents and principals, their response was almost always the same: They loved the idea of the program, but they needed teachers now.