Grow Your Own Teachers Initiative

Vision, Principles and Best Practices

Acknowledgements

 

The Grow Your Own Teachers Initiative is a policy of the state of Illinois, passed into law and funded through the state legislature’s appropriation process.  We are grateful to Governor Rod Blagojevich, the state legislature, the Illinois State Board of Education, and the sponsors and supporters of the legislation for making that possible.

The Illinois Grow Your Own Task Force, formed three years ago and made up of major institutional supporters, from university colleges of education and community colleges to school districts and school employee and teachers unions, has provided powerful institutional support. Thanks to all of you.

Five years ago, ACORN, a community organization that was conducting a campaign for high quality teaching in the west and south side neighborhoods of Chicago where it is active, convened a coalition of community organizations in Chicago to improve teaching and learning in low-income school classrooms.  The group called itself the Chicago Learning Campaign, later to become Grow Your Own Illinois.  It included the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, a community organization that was helping to prepare parents to become teachers through their Nueva Generación program with Chicago State University, a program that would become the model for the campaign.  It also included the Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform, an organization with a history of working with community organizations to advance quality education.  The coalition’s goal became to institutionalize the Nueva Generación approach to teacher recruitment and training for low-income schools statewide, and it required powerful collaborators.  Therefore, the coalition added three additional Chicago community organizations, all of whom were multi-issue organizations with a history of successful work to improve schools:  TARGET Area Development Corporation, in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood, Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, from the mid-south side, and Southwest Organizing Project, in the Gage Park/Chicago Lawn neighborhood. 

We take this opportunity to acknowledge the thousands of grassroots members of our partner community organizations who continue to plan and carry out the Grow Your Own campaign, from strategizing in leadership sessions to boarding buses for the state capital and holding informational meetings in the neighborhood.  It is their vision and determination that created and sustains Grow Your Own. 

                                             Grow Your Own Illinois

                                             May 10, 2006