Mission and Goals

Grow Your Own Illinois is a technical assistance collaborative dedicated to the improvement of teaching in public schools in low-income communities in Illinois,by reducing teacher turnover and increasing the numbers of teachers who share the race/ethnicity and culture of the students through supporting parents, community leaders, and paraprofessionals with programs to help them become high quality teachers.

The goals of Grow Your Own Illinois are :

• Reduce teacher turnover in schools serving low-income neighborhoods.
• Prepare well-qualified teachers for hard-to-staff (high-turnover) schools and hard-to-fill positions like bilingual and special education. 
• Create a pipeline of teachers of color in a period when the regular programs of Illinois colleges and universities are graduating fewer minority teachers.
• Improve teacher preparation for low-income schools by supporting the preparation of teachers well versed in content knowledge who respect the children, their families, and their language and culture.