Graduates join corps to go forth and teach

A newly created teacher corps program will send 21 recent college graduates with degrees in fields such as chemical engineering, biology, English, studio art and international studies into some of the state’s high-need school districts to teach for three years.

The inaugural fellows in the Arkansas Teacher Corps, publicly announced by the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville on Tuesday in Little Rock, were selected from a pool of 125 applicants.

The fellows, who come from across the United States but are largely graduates of Arkansas colleges and universities, will begin a six-week training program next month in Little Rock in cooperation with the Pulaski County Special School District. They should be working in classrooms in central and south Arkansas in August.

“I’m excited about getting bright young minds into the classroom,” Benton Brown, director of the program, said Tuesday. “These are people who are really committed to the students in the state of Arkansas and want to see them succeed. What we are doing is providing a path for them to get into the teaching profession. That’s our purpose - to make an impact on students by getting them great teachers.”

The corps program will provide the fellows with Little Rock housing for the tuition-free training. Each fellow will complete the necessary Praxis testing to attain provisional certification from the state by the time they start teaching in August. The school districts to which they are assigned will pay the fellows each district’s regular teacher salaries and provide teacher mentors for the corps members, but the districts will pay no fees to the Teacher Corps program. The corps program will provide the fellows with a $5,000 a year stipend.

Tom Smith, the dean of the UA College of Education and Health Professions, said Tuesday that the university takes seriously its role in preparing teachers, but there continues to be a demand for qualified teachers throughout the state, hence the establishment of the Teacher Corps.

“We’re identifying and recruiting young adults who are extremely capable, extremely bright, who didn’t necessarily think they wanted to be a teacher when they started to college, but at the end of their college careers they are looking for different opportunities,” Smith said. “Some have gone on to master’s degree programs, they’ve earned Ph.D,s. They have decided that now is a good time for them to give back to the state and enter into the teaching profession.”

Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell said the teacher corps is an effort to get effective teachers into parts of the state that are under-served.

“We don’t have a teacher shortage in Arkansas,” Kimbrell said. “We have capacity shortage geographically. We have people who want to teach, who are licensed to teach, but who don’t want to live in certain parts of the state. So we are encouraging our best and brightest young adults to look at this as an optional career path.When they see the impact that they can have on individual students, they will decide this is the career for them.”

Phillip Blake of Bear River City, Utah, who earned his doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville in December, said he anticipates a long-term career in education.

“I could go do research at some large company - there is potential there,” Blake said. “If I really want to make the biggest impact, it would be to influence future students, to get them excited about science and technology. My goal is to bring research opportunities to the high school. I want to stay in education … but I still want to bring in elements that took me into engineering.”

Aaron Mickens of Indianapolis, Ind., who just graduated second in his class with an English degree from the Philander Smith College, said he was motivated to apply to the program in part because he does not believe there are enough black male educators.

“I know I can be a role model,” he said, adding that as part of a fresh, new program, he also can be a change agent. “That’s perfect for me.”

Randi Henderson of Dallas, who just earned a bachelor’s degree in studio art from the Fayetteville campus, said she has always wanted to be a teacher and is looking forward to teaching either art or math in southwest Arkansas.

Casey Jenkins of Little Rock just earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Central Arkansas at Conway. He had planned a medical career but came to realize that the medical field was not a good fit, and that he enjoys developing curriculum and teaching kids attending Camp Aldersgate, which primarily serves children with disabilities.

“I’ve no teacher training at all, so this program seems like the best way to get my foot in the door,” Jenkins said. “I would love to be a biology teacher.”

To be eligible for the program, applicants had to have a bachelor’s degree in a field and have demonstrated academic success and a commitment to service.

Funding for the Arkansas program comes in part from the Walton Family Foundation and the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 05/22/2013

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