Grow Your Own Teachers Initiative

Vision, Principles and Best Practices

 

Forming a Consortium

The Grow Your Own legislation defines the membership of a GYO consortium.  Only two members were required to apply for the planning grants that were awarded in March 2006.  A planning grant consortium must have:

·        A community organization

·        A higher education institution with a college of education

·        A letter or letters from a group of schools or a school district expressing interest.

To apply for a full implementation grant, a consortium is to be made up of the following:

·        A community organization

·        A higher education institution with a college of education

·        A group of schools or a school district(s)

·        The consortium may also have a community college and a teachers union and/or school employee union

Each consortium member plays a critical role in the GYO work.  Grow Your Own was designed by community organizations, working with higher education partners.  The community organization is intended to be the lead organization in initiating GYO initiatives

 

The Roles and Resources of Community Organizations 

A community organization is a not-for-profit organization, usually working in low-income neighborhoods, that has the capacity to train, develop, and organize parents and community leaders into a constituency that will hold schools and school districts accountable for achieving high academic standards.   

Community organizations have an enormous stake in improving education, for families and their children who live in their communities and for their future. The multiple roles and resources of community organizations are essential to implement GYO initiatives successfully. 

• Constituency (ownership).  Community organizations bring together large numbers of people to decide key issues and develop solutions. Large numbers of well-informed, supportive members and community residents will help to overcome challenges and to communicate the importance of the GYO strategy statewide and nationally, creating a grassroots movement for truly high quality teaching and helping to insure the sustainability of this important initiative.
• Membership (recruitment).  The members of community organizations are people who live, work, and go to church in the community.  They know and trust each other and the organization.

• Leadership (focus on assets).  Community organizations invest in their members, tapping their assets and their strengths. Through training, experience, opportunities, and access, they help members grow personally and create a more promising future, enabling many of them, non-traditional candidates, to become teachers and all of them to advocate for learning communities in their schools.
• Relationships (building consortia).  In many ways, developing relationships is the work of community organizations.  Reaching out to others, such as parents, students, community residents, school staff and teachers, school districts and higher education institutions, they understand the interests of others and craft solutions that are both innovative and inclusive. Developing relationships across institutions, some of whom may never have worked together before, is a critical part of the GYO work.
• Understanding of high-need areas.  Community organizations work in high- need areas and understand the dynamics of these communities.

• Training and technical assistance.  Community organizations have experience conducting training and developing leaders among their members.

As GYO consortia have developed, community organizations have played roles that include:

• Organizing the consortium
• Preparing the planning or implementation grant
• Providing the coordinator for the program
• Recruiting candidates
• Providing or finding the support services for the potential cohort, including:

• tutoring

• child care

• counseling

• regular meetings

• leadership and organizing training

• site visits in classrooms at targeted schools

• celebrations and involvement in other community events.

The Roles of Community Colleges and Four Year Higher Education Institutions

The four-year higher education institution is the degree- and certificate-granting institution.  Thus, it has the critical role of preparing the students to be academically qualified for their teaching careers and insuring that they are prepared to pass all required  tests, including the Illinois Test of Basic Skills (ITBS), a language proficiency exam (for bilingual teacher candidates), content area tests and the professional teaching examination.  If a community college is involved, which is likely, its role is to provide an excellent education in the developmental courses and the general education courses, electives and prerequisites for admission into the college of education of the four-year university partner.  The community college also has the assignment of preparing students for the basic skills test, because that is taken before admission to the college of education.

In addition to the obvious academic responsibilities, the institution of higher education should play an active role in the community, with the community organization, in the lives of the students.  The non-traditional students who participate in GYO cohorts may be the first in their families to attend college.  The university partner works with these students and teaches them how the institution works and gradually transitions them into their role as college students.  The university personnel are also present in the community and involved in all aspects of the cohort.  This involvement ranges from regular academic advising to social activities involving the students and professors.  For the higher education institution, Grow Your Own provides a recruitment and support mechanism that may allow them to be successful in placing their graduates in hard to staff schools, which has long been a goal for many colleges of education. It may also increase their number of students of color and colleges of education graduates of color, another important goal.

 

In considering working with a higher education institution, it is important to determine the flexibility the institution may have. For instance, is it able to waive admission criteria, such as ACT test scores?  Will it make room for the GYO students in its college of education, and can it be flexible with the scheduling and location of the required courses for that program, in order to meet the needs of non-traditional adult students?

It is worth stressing that where both a community college and four year institution are working together, it is essential to coordinate the counseling programs and articulation agreements between them, so that no student wastes time and resources taking courses that are not required or that will not be transferable.  One of the most valuable aspects of Grow Your Own will be the ability, indeed the necessity, of developing articulation agreements and training counseling staffs to insure that every course taken by every participant is one that will advance that candidate towards their teaching certificate and degree.

The Role of Schools and School Districts

The schools in the consortium are low-income schools that are hard-to-staff or that have hard-to-fill positions.  Those terms are defined in the law and regulations.  The school district(s) is the district that includes low-income schools that are hard-to-staff or that have hard-to-fill positions. The GYO program is geared to address seemingly intractable problems of teacher turnover in hard-to-staff schools and teacher vacancies in hard-to-fill positions. School districts that have to spend their limited resources recruiting and inducting new teachers every year, only to lose them in a year or two, have much to gain from Grow Your Own. Schools that are required by NCLB to send “not highly qualified” notices to parents because they cannot find teachers in certain fields also stand to gain.

The roles of the targeted schools and school districts are critical to the entire program.  Teacher candidates in the Grow Your Own program are expected to have direct experience in and with the targeted schools throughout the program, and they are expected to be hired to work in those schools once they complete their preparation.  It is beneficial to all if the candidates get jobs or are active in the targeted schools during their preparation. For example, if the school district can develop a program that offers qualified Grow Your Own candidates employment opportunities as paraprofessionals,, that can be helpful.  When it comes time for GYO candidates to do their student teaching, they can be paid, under a special amendment to the GYO legislation, and the school district can use a variety of sources of public funds to pay them. 

Roles of Teacher Unions and School Employee Unions

School employee unions and teacher unions have a huge stake in Grow Your Own, because it provides a career ladder for their paraprofessional members to become teachers provides a non-alternative track to full certification and fosters good working relationships with other powerful institutions and organizations. 

Unions can also be very helpful to consortia. They often have the expertise to understand many of the problems that paraprofessionals face in attempting to go to school while working full time and raising a family. Furthermore, they may already have classes that assist their members in passing the basic skills test or the test for paraprofessionals, and they may already have contract provisions that reward their members who move up a career ladder.  They are among the most powerful players in the state capital when it comes time to win legislation or appropriations.  They are also critical allies on local issues that arise in Grow Your Own, such as getting the graduates of the program hired at the schools that need them, identifying obstacles to successful implementation and making changes that overcome the obstacles.  Although unions are optional consortium members in the law, it is good practice to include them in every consortium.