Most teachers go through an often grueling and unpaid student teaching period before they get their degree.
It’s a critical time in which they learn about classroom management and figure out whether teaching is for them. But working for free has always been a tough sell.
A pilot program in Wisconsin is testing out a paid apprenticeship program for education students. Other states have similar programs that produce hundreds of qualified teachers each year.
But in Wisconsin, the program appears to be stalling out. It has just eight participants in four school districts, including Wauwatosa, Elmbrook, Greendale and Appleton.
Miranda Dunlap is a reporter covering education at Wisconsin Watch. She recently reported on Wisconsin's program and spoke with WUWM Education Reporter Katherine Kokal about its future.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Katherine Kokal: So your reporting found that there were just eight apprentices working in four school districts. Why isn't this program more popular?
Miranda Dunlap: Everyone I talked to — from apprentices themselves, to the colleges that are offering the instruction, to the school districts that are paying the apprentices — they agree that this is a great method and a really accessible way for people to get on their way to becoming a teacher.
The problem is, like everything else, it comes down to money, and school districts cannot afford to pay these people for the time that they're not in the classroom and are receiving their training at the college. That's a non-negotiable part of the apprenticeship. You spend about 32 hours working as an employee and then about eight hours as a student yourself. And they're having a really hard time coming up with the cash to pay for those eight hours where their employee is not working.
There are a lot of states that have programs like these that are far more successful. Can you tell me about some of those?
Tennessee is a really good example to look at because it is a state that a lot of others were looking towards in building their program. It was the first federally recognized program in the country. And they're just churning out teachers at a pretty crazy rate. They pay fully for 600 new teachers to go through the apprenticeship program every year at no cost (to the students). So there is state funding going towards these students' tuition, and the money that they're receiving to work.
That is in full contrast with Wisconsin's program, where the issue is that there's no flow of state funding to help these school districts pay the apprentices. There's no flow of state funding to help these people afford their tuition.
Matthew Jacobson, the apprentice that you featured in this story, said that he was actually able to take what he was learning while working and immediately apply it. That's often a barrier, right?
Yeah, Matthew was just over the moon to be able to tell me all of the ways that he gets to apply what he's learned in class the very next day. He told me that "there is no better way to learn this job than to do this job." And I think probably a lot of people would agree with him.
He runs a reading intervention group at his school. He got to use the skills that he learned from the semester before in his phonological awareness class, which is basically the foundations of reading, and he got to take that class and then the next semester go and help kids who are not reading at the level that they should be get to where they are.
Can you tell us where Matthew is in the program and where he's teaching right now?
Dnnalp: Yes, Matthew is about halfway through, just like the other seven apprentices. So he's transitioning into the bachelor's portion of the apprenticeship this year. He's completed an associate's degree and has two years of classroom experience under his belt. And now he has two more to go. Currently, he is teaching at Brookfield Elementary School.
Kokal: I think it's also worth mentioning that he grew up in Brookfield. He went to St. John Vianney Catholic School. So kind of staying local through this apprenticeship program.
What did your reporting find about how and whether this program is going to continue?
It is kind of up in the air in the sense that the program really does start and end with school districts. The school districts have to be willing to make the investment to hire apprentices. And if no more are going to do that, then the program is effectively discontinued. But if more do, then it can continue on. And so we're kind of at the point of "will they or won't they?"
You can read Miranda's piece for Wisconsin Watch here.
Do you have a question about education or how schools work in our area? Submit it here to WUWM education reporter Katherine Kokal.
_
