Some new faces are showing up in the classrooms across Fulton County schools this fall, and they’re in front of the desks rather than in them.
Through the First Step program, education majors are recruited to spend their student teaching time in schools around the district.
Unlike many traditional student teaching programs that last only one semester and without compensation, First Step stretches the in-class training over an entire school year, provides a stipend and, ideally, ends with the student teachers being offered permanent positions.
For University of Georgia student Simran Roy, having a stipend is a plus to spending the year at Taylor Road Middle School in Johns Creek where she’s teaching sixth grade social studies.
“No one offers you anything for student teaching,” said Roy, who is among the first UGA students to be part of First Step. “Because of that, I think from now on there will be more from UGA.”
First Step program manager Marsha Francis, Ph.D., says the different approach launched in the 2016-17 school year to make a significant impact on teacher hiring.
“We had 250 [student teacher] placements every school year, but we didn’t keep them,” she said. “We also didn’t know the quality of the mentoring they were receiving; sometimes they were paired with a good teacher, sometimes not. We needed to redo the way we did clinical support.”
Francis studied similar programs on the national and state level. “We reached out to West Georgia that had something going with Coweta County, and they became our first partner,” she said. “We also worked with the College of Education and Human Development at Georgia State to get them involved and to map out the idea of a year-long internship.”
Francis also recruited Fulton teachers with more than three years experience and high evaluation scores to coach and provide feedback to interns. The staff teachers honed their mentoring skills through a GSU workshop.
“We wanted to build a culture of appreciating these students and to tell them we wanted them to start their careers with us,” said Francis. “We set up this long game so they can experience the entire arc of a school year. And they’re going to hand-picked schools with mentors who want to work with them.”
The program eventually branched out to education majors at Spelman, Clark Atlanta and Kennesaw. Last year's pilot launch had 41 interns, 35 of whom were hired. The current group of 70 interns are in 26 schools, where they've been given laptops and a $3,000 stipend.
“There’s no money in student teaching; you do it to get your hours in to get a job,” said Francis. “We know the work is difficult, and we give them this little investment to recognize that.”
Francis also expects at least 80% of this year’s group will stay in the district as staff teachers. “But the onus is on us to build that relationship and convince them Fulton is a great place to start their careers.”
Information about Fulton County Schools is online at fultonschools.org.
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Each week we look at programs, projects and successful endeavors at area schools, from pre-K to grad school. To suggest a story, contact H.M. Cauley at hm_cauley@yahoo.com or 770-744-3042.
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