Teacher dearth stirs UA to help

Program intends to aid poor areas

A new program at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville aims to supply more teachers to schools in poor communities, especially in southern and eastern Arkansas.

When school districts in Arkansas can’t find enough teachers, particularly for high-school math and science classes, their options include assigning a teacher who is certified in another subject, bumping up class sizes or cutting electives, said Benton Brown, program director for the new Arkansas Teacher Corps. Some districts spend money traveling outside the state to recruit candidates.

“There are students there who really want to learn and need good teachers,” he said.

The Arkansas Teacher Corps program is accepting applications for the next several weeks for fellowships that will send selected participants to teach in classrooms for three years, starting in August, Brown said.

An early-decision deadline for applications is Jan. 18, but applications will be reviewed through March 15.

“It is extremely rewarding to teach in one of these high-need areas,” Brown said. “You really see what a difference you can make.”

Brown taught highschool math for two years at Central High School in the Helena-West Helena School District with Teach for America, a national program that offers an alternate route into teaching. Central High School is one of the lowest-performing schoolsin the state.

After his two-year stint there, Brown, a graduate of Rogers High School, returned to his home in Northwest Arkansas and taught math for a year at Bentonville High, where more than 90 percent of students earned proficient scores in 2012 on End-of-Course exams in literacy and math.

The two experiences provided him a glimpse into the spectrum of education provided by Arkansas schools, said Brown, now a research associate in the Department of Education Reform, part of the College of Education and Health Professions at UA. Great teachers work in districts with teacher shortages, but those districts need more teachers willing to live there, Brown said.

“You can go from a world-class education todistricts that struggle to find teachers and districts that struggle with student achievement,” Brown said. “That gives me that drive to want to find teachers for those areas.”

RECRUITING APPLICANTS

The Arkansas Teacher Corps, also part of the College of Education and Health Professions, will provide a new alternative certification program for people to become teachers who did not major in education, said Gary Ritter, who holds the endowed chair in education policy and is director of the Office of Education Policy at the Fayetteville campus.

“We hope to encourage talented college seniors who are thinking about what to do next year to apply,” he said. “There are lots of school districts across Arkansas, but mainly in more economically disadvantaged areas, where they’re having trouble filling all the spots.”

The fellowship awards a $5,000 stipend in addition to the salary paid by the school district, said Ritter, a facultyco-sponsor of the program.

Ritter hopes the program will have 20 to 30 people in the program teaching in the first year in a half-dozen school districts, he said. The program will match the skills of the fellowship recipients with the needs of the districts, but Ritter anticipates that most will teach at the middle and high school levels. The program is modeled after the national Teach for America program, which uses a competitive recruiting process to place recent college graduates without training in education into classrooms in high-need areas for two years.

The Arkansas Teacher Corps will place corps members in districts for three years, Brown said.

SUMMER TRAINING

The program will operate in partnership with the university, with school districts where participants are placed and with communityorganizations that will acquaint them with the school culture, said Conra Gist, also a faculty co-sponsor and assistant professor of curriculum and instruction.

A bachelor’s degree provides the fellowship recipients with content knowledge, and their training with the Arkansas Teacher Corps will help them learn to teach that content, Gist said. They also will be taught how to ask effective questions; guide discussions; engage students in learning; design lesson plans; and track students’ progress.

When college graduates enter the program, they will spend six to eight weeks in training over the summer. They will be placed in schools similar to the highneed campuses where they will work during the fall, Gist said.

The teacher trainees will work in summer-school classrooms alongside mentor teachers who are effective inraising student achievement, Gist said. The fellows will observe their mentors using instructional strategies that affect student achievement and will have opportunities to practice those strategies.

The training continues even after the program participants enter classrooms in August, Gist said. They will have the same mentors provided to all other new teachers, but will have an additional mentor through the program who will provide feedback, Gist said.

“We want to make sure they have a sense of the effective practices,” Gist said.

Brown explained the program will consider bright, energetic college graduates, including those intending to graduate in May, Brown said.

The best candidates will have at least a 3.0 gradepoint average, he said.

More information about applications is available at arkansasteachercorps.org.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 12/30/2012

Upcoming Events