CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (CLARKSVILLENOW) – The local school system is the first in the state to set up a teacher training pipeline, and two short years after its inception, it’s now the model for 38 other school districts and on the cusp of being implemented statewide.

Sean Impeartrice, chief academic officer for the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System, recently sat down with Katie Gambill and Charlie Koon for a Clarksville’s Conversations talk about the system’s Teacher Residency Pathways (TRP) program. “It’s an opportunity for us to invest in the community – partner with a local university around the workforce demand area,” Impeartrice said.

How Pathways started

In the 2017-18 school year, CMCSS received a SEED grant for improving educators’ skills and effectiveness. At the same time, the district was looking to diversify its workforce and resolve the teacher shortage.

This is where ideas about the teacher pipeline began to take root.

“We all believe that teachers should represent the community they work in, and so we really wanted to focus on that. At the same time that was happening, we were 60 teachers short for the first time. We’re blessed to live in a community that is full of growth, but that growth was challenging for us as far as hiring teachers,” Impeartrice said.

Growth also posed a problem for ensuring that the workforce reflected the community. Impeartrice said 16 percent of the system’s teachers are “ethnically diverse” but about 50 percent of the district’s student body come from “ethnically diverse backgrounds.”

In working on these problems, CMCSS discovered a program in practice in Fresno, California, where schools had partnered with California State University-Fresno. They had created a program that Fresno high school seniors and the school’s classified workforce could apply to, essentially fast-tracking them to becoming teachers.

Taking the program statewide

The CMCSS pilot of the program was initiated in the 2018-19 school year, and it comprised 14 soon-to-be middle school teachers. They all now serve as CMCSS educators.

What started as a singular partnership with Austin Peay State University has grow to four pathways with partnerships at two other colleges.

Additionally, state government has taken an interest in the program and has applied for financial support to implement the program in every school district.

Impeartrice added that Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has taken an interest in the program’s innovative edge too, and has filled out a letter requesting federal funding to take the program statewide.

“We’re hoping that by Jan. 5, that Tennessee will be the first statewide ‘grow your own’ apprenticeship program in the United States,” Impeartrice said.

Options and benefits

There are four pathways available:

  • Early-Learning Teacher Residency in partnership with APSU.
  • Elementary-Middle Teacher Residency in partnership with APSU.
  • Clarksville Teaching Fellows in partnership with Nashville Teacher Residency.
  • Lipscomb Teacher Residency in partnership with Lipscomb University.

The pathways vary slightly, but all allow residents to serve as educational assistants, giving them on-the-job training in classrooms while completing their coursework.

While paying them as assistants, the program also covers all university coursework and helps them get educator certifications after graduation so residents can roll right into a new job.

This model helps not only the individual, but the community too.

“If you think of teacher prep right now, in your senior year when you go to study to become a teacher, you have two six-week placements. What that has yielded us over time, is in three to five years, 50 percent of those teachers leave the field. Where in a residency-type program, 80 to 90 percent stay in the community, they’re still in the field,” Impeartrice said.

How to become a teacher

Mid-January is CMCSS’ primary recruiting season for the TRP program. The upcoming program has 82 positions available, and CMCSS will host a virtual informational session on the website soon.

There’s an application and interview process, and the program has competency standards residents need to meet alongside the university requirements necessary to graduate. But after graduation, a position with CMCSS is guaranteed.

The program is available to CMCSS high school seniors, as well as to classified staff already in the school system, to include janitorial, cafeteria or support staff along with others.

It’s also available to those who’ve already graduated with a bachelor’s degree but need additional education to qualify for certain positions that require master’s degrees.

If you are interested in Teacher Residency Pathways, go to the website or email trp@cmcss.net.

“We have pipeline facilitators that monitor that website all the time and those emails, and if anybody expresses any interest at all, you’ll get an immediate response,” Impeartrice said.

“So if you’re a member of the community and you’ve thought, ‘Well, I’ve really thought of going into the profession of teaching, but at this time in my life I can’t be without a job or I can’t afford to do it on my own,’ let us work with you, because we can provide those opportunities for you.”