WINDHAM, Conn. — While many of their friends are hanging out at the mall or beach, about 20 Connecticut high school students are spending much of their summer vacation in the classroom.
It’s an increasingly common scene nationwide as educators, seeking new ways to recruit teachers in critical shortage areas, are embracing a “grow your own” approach by introducing the profession to teens as early as middle school.
And while many of the programs are too new to determine how many of the teens eventually enter the field, the longest-running initiatives such as Eastern Connecticut State University’s program have tracked many of their alumni through college and into jobs as teachers, guidance counselors and school social workers.
Getting classroom experience is a core part of the curriculum at the nation’s approximately 1,400 teacher colleges, but for many high school students, learning the nuts and bolts of teaching often must wait until after graduation.
The programs, including Eastern Connecticut’s 15-year-old Summer Institute for Future Teachers (SIFT), aim to change that by giving teens an early chance to try student teaching, learn to draft lesson plans and work with different grade levels.
Education leaders hope it serves two purposes: identifying the most promising future educators and potentially filling the gaps in areas with chronic teacher shortages. The most critical areas nationwide include bilingual education, special education, science and technology, math and urban teaching jobs.
Students who complete the programs are not locked into teaching, but organizers say they leave with a stronger sense of whether it’s a good fit for them and, if so, an advantage that could help their future employers and the children they will someday educate.
