About Us | Get Involved | Resources | For the Media | Advocacy

Grow Your Own Teachers Initiative

Vision, Principles and Best Practices

Vision

 

Our vision of schools is of institutions deeply grounded in their communities.  They are schools whose doors are open to families, where teachers and parents can collaborate, and where children feel secure in their second home.  These schools understand the broader needs of students and their families, and provide a community of learning where the whole neighborhood can grow.

The Grow Your Own Teachers (GYO) initiative stems from this vision.  Schools can support the growth and development of families; community leaders--parents, paraprofessionals and others committed to the children and their education--can become teachers prepared to lead this school-community collaboration.

Community leaders who become teachers will stay in their communities to teach, stabilizing teacher staffs while building the bridges needed to strength school-community collaborations.

Grow Your Own Teacher programs address several important and related problems at the same time.

1)      GYO creates a pipeline of teachers much more likely to stay long-term in low-income communities, thus saving the school district money and creating stability for the students, while leading over time to a more seasoned teaching force. 

2)      GYO brings teachers into schools who know the history, culture and language of the community, and can understand the needs and issues of students and families as co-equals and neighbors.

3)      GYO teachers can communicate and collaborate with parents.  These community-people-turned-teachers can, in turn, involve parents in the schools, and draw on the skills and knowledge of these particular parents to strengthen the schools. 

Most important, GYO teachers are also passionate about these particular students, who are their own children and the children of others.   

In order to develop these teachers, GYO must recruit candidates who are rooted in their communities, who have experience with children, and who have demonstrated their interest in the schools and students while serving as volunteer and active parents, as school paraprofessionals and as community leaders.  The GYO teacher preparation must build on and develop the knowledge and skills that candidates possess, and deepen their understanding of their own communities, as well as prepare them academically.  GYO initiatives must not “unteach” its candidates their knowledge and passion about their own communities.  It must return its candidates to their communities as stronger leaders, not as detached professionals.

The GYO Illinois initiative was developed by a group of Chicago-based community organizations working closely with university educators.  Thus, the voices and interests of active community residents have shaped this initiative.  And GYO itself grows out of a national movement of community organizing for school improvement in low-income neighborhoods. Community organizations have been advocating for more equitable and effective policies from districts and states, and at the same time developing the relationships at the local school/community level which can transform schools through collective community efforts.  The on-going partnership of community organizations required in GYO implementation means that community interests will remain at the table long-term to ensure that the programs meet community needs and academic requirements.  The development of the programs should hopefully be an educational process for both community people and for educators.

Carrying out the GYO vision will be different in different communities – whether they are long-term disinvested African American urban neighborhoods with high teacher turnover; or increasingly immigrant neighborhoods where the teaching force no longer reflects the language or culture of the new student population.  In both cases a pipeline of GYO teachers can help provide that critical mass of stable community-based teachers who can facilitate bridge-building beyond the school walls.

GYO will help facilitate the development of collective efforts to improve learning, first through the supportive cohort model of GYO, and later through the strengthening of broad-based learning communities where GYO graduates go to teach. 

This document contains a record of our practices and understandings to date.  GYO Illinois will continue to develop best practice as it expands to new communities.

Principles

The basic principles of Grow Your Own programs follow.

1. Low-income communities of color are places with enormous assets that can be tapped for GYO and for education of the community’s children.
2. Strong and creative relationships among parents, students, community residents, paraprofessionals, teachers, administrators, community colleges, schools and school districts, higher education institutions, teacher and school employee unions and community organizations are a major source of power for quality education.
3. Community organizing can mobilize these resources and bring them together to win and sustain good policy and good programs over the long haul.
4. Community organizations are central to a successful Grow Your Own program by providing an independent parent/community voice at the table where decisions are made.
5. Lower achieving students in lower achieving schools have a right to the best teachers with high levels of content knowledge, excellent teaching skills and good experience
6. Adult, non-traditional teaching candidates need the same elements of high quality academics and pedagogy that we hope to find exemplified in the classroom practice of those candidates once they become teachers, including teaching that engages students, respects the knowledge of students and draws on their experience.
7. Leadership training and organizing training can help prepare teachers who are problem solvers, lifelong learners, collaborators, trust builders and powerful players in the public arena.