Grow Your Own

Abstract

This chapter focuses on two persistent challenges in teacher education and the teaching profession, specifically the development and retention of quality teachers. It examines the challenges that school districts and education preparation providers (EPPs) face in recruiting and preparing diverse candidates for hard-to-fill content areas and schools. This work began when a college of education and a school district collaboratively worked to design a new grow your own (GYO) model where recent high school graduates and paraprofessionals are paid to work with the district's best teachers, while earning an accelerated bachelor's degree, with all tuition, fees, and textbooks provided. This racially diverse cohort was dually licensed to teach in elementary (K-5) and special education and placed in the lowest socioeconomic schools in the districts with the commitment to teach in the district for at least three years.