Teachers For Tomorrow in Urban Schools: Recruiting and Supporting the Pipeline

Abstract

Paterson Teachers for Tomorrow (PT4T) is a collaborative project between the Paterson, NJ Public Schools and the College of Education at William Paterson University of New Jersey (WPUNJ), created to attract talented high school students from Paterson to careers in teaching, prepare them to be effective teaching professionals, and return them to the Paterson Public Schools. It is funded through donations from private foundations, local (NJ) businesses, and the WPUNJ foundation. This article provides an overview of the PT4T program. We offer a rationale for the PT4T program by highlighting the issue of recruitment and retention for urban schools, describing the collaboration between the city school district of Paterson, NJ and William Paterson University, and highlighting the demographics of the Paterson Public Schools. In this article, we also explain the structure, components, theoretical framework, and goals of PT4T; discuss our successes in the first and second years; and conclude with future directions. Recruitment and Retention for Urban Schools

Examining Grow Your Own Programs Across the Teacher Development Continuum: Mining Research on Teachers of Color and Nontraditional Educator Pipelines

“…A number of relatively new high school GYO programs have emerged in recent years that were created with the specific intent of encouraging students of color to enter the teaching profession. The Paterson Teachers for Tomorrow (PT4T; Hill & Gillette, 2005), Pathways2Teaching (Bianco, Leech, & Viesca-Mitchell, 2011; Goings & Bianco, 2016; Tandon et al, 2015), and Oregon Teacher Pathway (Villagómez, Easton-Brooks, Gomez, Lubbes, & Johnson, 2016) were created through strong partnerships between universities and school districts, have a college readiness focus, and offer students college credit while they explore becoming a teacher through coursework and field experience. These programs are anchored in strong critical theoretical frameworks emphasizing the importance of CCW.…”

A Candid Talk to Teacher Educators about Effectively Preparing Teachers Who Can Teach Everyone’s Children

“…Regardless of the geographic area where candidates end up teaching, there is a moral mandate to prepare a diverse teaching corps of culturally relevant teachers. Although some alternative routes to teaching have been successful in recruiting a more diverse corps of teacher candidates (U.S. Department of Education, 2004) and some "grow your own" projects in traditional programs are promising (Hill & Gillette, 2005), there is scant evidence regarding the impact of these candidates on student learning and on their longevity in the profession.…”

The Critical Educators of Color Pipeline: Leveraging Youth Research to Nurture Future Critical Educators of Color

“…Researchers prioritizing diversity in teacher education implore pipeline programs to specifically examine ways to support historically marginalized groups, such as young Black girls, at the intersection of race, class and gender in order to enter the profession as disrupters of educational inequities (Gist et al 2018). Teachers for Tomorrow in Patterson, New Jersey, highlights the possibilities of implementing a curriculum focused on igniting interest among minoritized youth through a critical pedagogy that includes theoretical underpinnings such as critical race theory (Hill and Gillette 2005). Pathways2Teaching is another program that seeks to nurture high school students of color to become critical, transformative educators in Denver, Colorado (Bianco et al 2011).…”

“…Within a growing sociopolitical context steeped in marginalizing rhetoric and policies, disenfranchised communities of color require these critical educators who are willing to fight for equity and justice alongside students and families. While efforts have been made to recruit and to sustain adults of color in becoming critical educators (Lewis 2006;Madda et al 2012;Skinner 2010), a group largely ignored for teacher recruitment and retention includes the exact population these efforts purport to serve: minoritized youth (Bianco et al 2011;Hill and Gillette 2005). Minoritized youth are defined as students from under-resourced, racially marginalized backgrounds.…”