Community Rationale

Community Organizations have been critical to the development of the Illinois Grow Your Own Teachers initiative.

Community Organizations:

Central to the

Grow Your Own Teachers Initiative

Our model: Nueva Generacion Six years ago, Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA) and Chicago State University (CSU) formed a strong partnership, unique in the country. Dozens of leaders—mostly low-income Latina parents—who had spent 100 hours working with teacher mentors in neighborhood schools through LSNA’s Parent Mentor program, signed on for the arduous journey to become bilingual teachers. Click here for more info on this project. Chicago State and LSNA designed a program for them and CSU wrote and received a five-year federal grant. Key elements:

Cohort of teacher candidates: a group of candidates know each other, are in class together and provide support for each other
A full-time coordinator provides individualized support
Classes were held in the Logan Square neighborhood
Classes were held at times convenient for the candidates
Tuition and support services were covered by a five-year federal grant

Now, 30 women, linked by community friendships and support, have almost completed their teacher preparation. Once certified, they will be 30 highly qualified bilingual teachers of color, in hard-to-fill positions, working in low-income, hard-to-staff schools. They know the children, know their culture, speak their language, and have strong community connections. They live in the community and will stay in the schools, once hired. They are committed to being excellent teachers who will work to ensure strong academic achievement for the children.

Grow Your Own teachers: Why

It is a community-based, innovation solution that addresses critical problems:

teacher turnover in low-income neighborhood schools. Some 40% of new teachers leave low-income neighborhood schools in their first 3 years of teaching, exacerbating the problems of student achievement. GYO will support parents, community leaders, and paraprofessionals from the neighborhood to become highly qualified teachers.
finding teachers for hard-to-fill positions, like bilingual and special education. School districts spend enormous energy and funds trying to find teachers for these hard-to-fill positions.
preparing teachers of color 87% of new teachers are Caucasian. The numbers of new African American and Latina teachers are declining. GYO prepares teachers of color—people who are members of our community organizations and who love the community and the children but rarely are teachers in the schools our children attend.
preparing teachers who know and respect the children, the families, and the culture. The jargon for this is cultural competence, so necessary for successful teaching in low-income areas.

Roles of community organizations

The grounding of the GYO work in community organizations is essential. Community organizations have an enormous stake in improving education, for our families and their future. Community organizations play critical roles that are also essential to implement the GYO initiative successfully during the planning year. They include:

Developing constituency (ownership). Community organizations bring together large numbers of people to decide key issues to address and to develop strategies for solutions. Being able to turn out large numbers of well-informed, supportive members gives us an important source of power.

GYO: Developing community organizational colleagues around the state to work together will build broader ownership and support that will continue to be important as the initiative is implemented, both to help overcome challenges and to communicate the importance of the GYO strategy statewide and nationally.

Developing members (recruitment). The members of our community organizations are people who live, work, and go to church in the community. They know each other. This will be a critical component in recruiting a cohort of potential GYO teacher candidates, in our communities and in communities around the state.

GYO: In many cases, the GYO cohort will be drawn from members of the community organizations who will be the lead groups in urban and rural areas around the state, members who trust each other and the organization.

Developing leaders (focus on assets). Community organizations invest in our members, using their assets and their strengths. We develop them as leaders, through training, experience, opportunities, and access. As part of the way we work, we help our members create a more promising future, tapping their assets and interests.

GYO: We will work with our own members and with other community organizations around the state, to uncover and support the assets that enable many of them, non-traditional candidates, to become teachers. Our ability to “see” assets and to know how to structure investments and to provide the supports that allow them to flower is essential to GYO.

Developing relationships (building consortia). In many ways, developing relationships is the work of community organizations. We regularly reach out to other people with power and institutional resources. We have much expertise and experience in working with many individuals, groups, and institutions. We know the importance of understanding the interests of others and of crafting solutions that are both innovative and inclusive.
GYO implementation: Developing, and helping other community organizations to develop, relationships across institutions, some of whom may never have worked together before, is a critical part of the GYO work, in both the planning and the implementation phases. We will use our experience and the many working relationships we have already developed with higher education, school districts, and community organizations to support consortia development
Understanding of high need areas. Community organizations work in high need areas and understand the dynamics of these communities very well.
Training and technical assistance. Community organizations have experience conducting training and developing leaders among their members.