How to Avoid 5 Common Mistakes When Building a ‘Grow Your Own’ Teacher Program

By Dr. Victoria Hansen Stockton

School districts around the country are grappling with the challenge of declining teacher pipelines. In Illinois, where my district, Bellwood School District 88, is located, a recent statewide survey found that:

• 87 percent of schools have teacher shortages;

• 91 percent of school leaders get fewer than five (and sometimes zero) applicants for open teaching positions; and

• 71 percent of school leaders need to fill more teacher positions than they did last school year.

Statistics like these point to the need for a community-centered approach to building a teacher pipeline. As a majority minority district with 180 certified, licensed teachers serving 2,000 students, Bellwood is committed to building a diverse workforce, but during COVID, we realized that the traditional ways of recruiting were not working anymore. 

In collaboration with BloomBoard, we launched a “grow your own” program that offers paraprofessionals and staff the opportunity to earn a bachelor’s degree on the job. Over the past five years, we’ve seen the most common pitfalls that districts launching programs like ours fall into. Here’s how you can avoid them.  

Mistake 1: Relying only on expensive, time-consuming traditional degree paths

Solution: Incorporate on-the-job degree models

With declining undergraduate enrollment, there are fewer graduates from traditional degree programs for teacher education. Additionally, these programs, which take years and often require a year of student teaching with no pay, sometimes aren’t a fit for nontraditional students. Our program allows paraprofessionals and staff already working in the district to earn their degrees at little or no cost to them—and allows them to continue working in the halls of our schools (with pay) as they’re earning their credentials. 

To make this work, the program is based on portfolios that aspiring teachers build on the job. Districts could have classified staff working in classrooms, as lunchroom monitors, in a “one period a day placement,” or in a substitute teaching role. While they're in that capacity, they're progressing through their lesson plans and their student work. They videotape themselves delivering those lesson plans and upload the videos into our system, where faculty from a fully accredited, approved prep program, such as Lake Erie College and Oklahoma Christian University, give them annotated, one-on-one, feedback about what they could do to improve their practice.

Changing the model from time-based or lecture-based into entirely portfolio-based allows our employees to integrate their work towards their degree directly into their day job without having to do coursework on nights and weekends.

Mistake 2: Not tapping into your local talent pool

Solution: Community-centered recruitment expanded into high schools

While some districts look far and wide for new teachers, one lesson we’ve learned about recruiting a diverse workforce is meeting them where they are. We have to go into our Black and Brown communities and make a compelling case that our children need us.

We also need to start recruiting potential teachers at a younger age. I recently asked a class of 35 high schoolers, “How many of you want to be teachers?” I was excited to see more than half of them raise their hands! I applauded them for wanting to go into the field and talked to them about my journey: how I started out as a teacher and moved up the ladder, and now I’m a superintendent. I told them we need people like them in the trenches. 

To bring students like these into our pipeline, we’re reimagining what our K-12 career days look like. Students have always heard about what it takes to be a lawyer or a doctor, but I say let’s talk about being an educator. If we don't get on a bullhorn and talk about the joys and rewards of being an educator, then who will?

Mistake 3: Lack of program funding

Solutions: Grants, apprenticeship funding, and collaborating with local workforce boards

Bellwood has a couple of our secretaries in our degree program. When we did a Signing Day to celebrate them starting it, they were in tears, and they told me it was because they dreamed of being teachers but never could have afforded a degree without this program.

To fund our program, we've tapped into an Illinois state teacher vacancy grant. Other districts have found funding partners in their local workforce boards. Whatever creative solution you find, the goal is to remove the barrier of cost so that you can help your current staff change their lives.

Mistake 4: Ineffective or insufficient marketing

Solution: A three-pronged approach to recruitment and retention

When we started the program, we were surprised that more people weren’t jumping at the opportunity to earn a degree without taking on student loan debt and with the opportunity to increase their salary by as much as $30,000. But when we changed the way we conducted marketing the program, working more closely with our team to get the message out there, the calls started coming in. Our approach has three prongs: 

1. We ensure our recruitment efforts attract teachers who want to be a part of our district.

2. To prospective teachers, we make the case that “we need you” because we want to continue offering ambitious instruction so our kids can see continued growth in their scores.

3. We offer our staff and paraprofessionals the chance to be a part of something great–to work right here in their community, where they’re already stakeholders, to help students succeed. 

The genesis of our marketing success came from celebrating the teachers who went through a microcredentialing program. Those teachers became our brand ambassadors for the degree program, which takes the same job-embedded, portfolio-based approach. It also helps to get building leaders on board, because they can be brand ambassadors, too. Now, when I have colleagues asking to talk to me about the program, I invite them over to meet these ambassadors and hear about their life-changing experiences.

Mistake 5: Not enough support for future teachers in the program 

Solutions: Embedded support, ongoing mentorship, and celebrations

When teacher candidates have questions, everyone in our program takes advantage of the support built into the BloomBoard platform. They can also count on their professors, as well as teachers who we’ve identified as mentors to the program. They can go right next door and ask a fellow teacher, “Hey, how does this look in your class?” It’s also enormously helpful to have principals and building leaders on board to support this work.

On top of the pedagogical and logistical support, Bellwood offers moral support as well. When we did our Signing Day ceremony this fall, I got all of the candidates in the new cohort pennants for the university so they could feel the same sense of pride I feel in my college. The message I’m sending is, “We’re proud of you, and we’re not going to let you fail.”

Five years ago, Bellwood took the bull by the horns and delved into this new world of “grow your own” because we realized that the traditional ways of recruiting were not going to get us the teachers we wanted in front of students. Today, I would say to my colleagues out there trying to build their teacher pipelines: Don't be afraid to do something different. Just try it with a small group of potential candidates. The buzz in my district about this program has been so heartwarming to see. When I had those candidates crying at the Signing Day ceremony, telling me how grateful they were, I thought, “I can retire knowing that I made a difference in someone’s life.”

Dr. Victoria H. Stockton, the superintendent of Bellwood School District 88 in Illinois, is a dynamic and visionary leader with a rich background in education spanning nearly two decades. Her vision is not only to uphold academic excellence but also to ensure that every child receives an equitable education that is personalized to their unique needs. This is evident in the strides that District 88 has made in STEM education, current sustainability initiatives, and the recently implemented House System, aimed at creating a connection, sense of belonging, and healthy competition across the entire school district.