In mid-March, Bullard High School students Merrick Crowley and Craig Coleman, as part of an educator pathway program, taught an interactive science lesson for a fifth-grade class at Gibson Elementary in Fresno.

At the front of the classroom, Coleman held an egg above one of three containers filled with liquids, such as saltwater. He and Crowley asked students to predict what would happen to each egg: Will it sink or float? The fifth graders, wide-eyed and smiling, raised their hands to share their predictions.

“You said if we took a field trip (to the Red Sea), we would float,” said one fifth grader to explain why she thought the egg would float in the saltwater.

Once Coleman dropped the egg in the water, the students expressed joy or disappointment, depending on whether their predictions were accurate or not. “Can anyone tell me why it’s floating?” Crowley asked as Coleman hinted that the answer was related to density.

The high schoolers were in Fresno Unified’s Career Technical Education (CTE) Pathway course, one of the district’s three Teacher Academy programs that has the potential to increase the number of educators entering the K-12 system.

The Effectiveness of High School Educator Pathway Programs

According to educators and leaders in the school district and across the state, introducing and preparing students for the teaching field, starting at the high-school level, will be key to addressing the teacher shortage — a problem affecting schools across the nation.

Teachers are retiring in greater numbers than in years past, and many, burned out or stressed by student behavior, have quit. Fewer teacher candidates are enrolling in preparation programs, worsening the shortage.

Since 2016, California has invested $1.2 billion to address the state’s enduring teacher shortage.

Despite the efforts, school districts continue to struggle to recruit teachers, especially for hard-to-fill jobs in special education, science, math and bilingual education.

As a result, districts and county education offices have been creating and expanding high school educator pathway programs under “grow-our-own” models intended to strengthen and diversify the teacher pipeline and workforce. High school educator programs expose students to the career early on by “tapping into (students’)  love of helping others” and “keeping them engaged,” creating a more diverse teacher workforce and putting well-trained teachers in the classroom, said Girlie Hale, president of the Teachers College of San Joaquin, which partners with a grade 9-12 educator pathway program.

Read the full article about teacher pathway programs by Lasherica Thornton and Diana Lambert at EdSource.