Program prepares students to teach in Tacoma
A group of 16 students who graduated this year from Tacoma high schools will be heading out this fall on their college journey to become teachers in the very school district from which they received their education.
It’s all part of a new program called Seed Teachers in partnership among Tacoma Public Schools, Tacoma-based non-profit Degrees of Change, and Pacific Lutheran University. These 16 students who attended Tacoma public schools will be able to earn a college degree and teaching credential debt-free from PLU and be provided opportunities for on-the-job learning in TPS classrooms while they attend the university. Best of all, they will be reflective of the students they teach among all the Tacoma school district’s diversity.
Seed Teachers brings together successful elements of two Degrees of Change programs, Act Six and Seed Internships, and builds on the work of TPS’s Teach 253 program. Teach 253 was already in place as a partnership between PLU and Tacoma Public Schools designed to support high school students who want to become teachers.
Act Six is a proven leadership development and college scholarship initiative that brings together diverse, multicultural cadres of emerging leaders who use their college education to make a positive impact on campus and in their communities. Seed Internships identifies exceptional Puget Sound college students and recent grads from underrepresented backgrounds, and matches them with top, local employers.
"With a generous package from PLU, and TPS providing on-the-job work experience, in four or five years the first cohort of 16 students will provide a batch of young teachers who have already been through the Tacoma Public Schools system and know the community,” said Pat Irwin, director of the school district’s Educator Pathways program.
For 18 years, Irwin was principal at Lincoln High School then he accepted an offer from district Superintendent Dr. Josh Garcia to help get Educator Pathways going to create a way for students in Tacoma who are interested in becoming teachers to go to university and have it, for the most part, paid for. Under the new Seed Teachers program, the 16 students will be paid for the in-classroom teaching experience they will receive, and this money will help supplement their PLU education.
Student Taliyah Cariaga-Kaliga said that if it weren’t for the Seed Teachers program, she would likely not be able to afford college or she would have to go through considerable difficulty to meet the cost. "Now I can go and also have a way to make money for other things I need for school like books and stuff like that,” she said.
Cariaga-Kaliga graduated from Lincoln High School this year and walked in the graduation ceremony at the Tacoma Dome with her proud family there with her.
"It was a really good moment for all of us,” she said, as she is the first in all her family to go to college. It is a real gift for her to take part in Seed Teachers and she is excited to come back to the school district to teach once she graduates. Cariaga-Kaliga has wanted to be a teacher ever since she was a young girl helping to take care of her little brother and sisters.
"Especially being the oldest sibling, I just always felt like I was helping them learn things and I love teaching. At school I got to be in Teach 253 and we went to a school in our neighborhood to work with a teacher and students. Being in that class solidified by decision as a teacher.”
Tim Herron is the founder and CEO for Degrees of Change. Based in Tacoma, Degrees of Change is a national organization that serves students across the Pacific Northwest and Midwest. Of the students served, 90 percent are students of color, 70 percent are first-generation college students, and 80 percent are from low-income families.
"We focus on leadership development and how we take diverse, underrepresented students in the city, help them succeed and thrive through college, and come back as leaders in their communities,” Herron said. "We’re a college success program but at our core we’re really about those longer-term outcomes – those well-educated, connected homegrown leaders and the impact they can have on the broader community.”
Herron said this inaugural start of Seed Teachers was done rather quickly with student recruitment commencing this past February. Securing 16 students right out of the gate was a great start, and now the goal for the program is to recruit 20 TPS students a year starting in September.
"We’re very happy with this amazing group that we got in this first round and we’re confident that next year, in a full year, we’ll have a bigger pool.”
Mary Jo Larsen is Assistant Dean at PLU’s Department of Education. "This group definitely meets the goal collectively of having teachers and teacher candidates that reflect the communities,” she said. "We are increasingly viewing ourselves as a university of and for the community rather than a private liberal arts college that’s separate. PLU is very much about the community in partnering to meet whatever needs there are and in this case the need is teachers from Tacoma for Tacoma. It definitely fits with our mission.”
Irwin noted a recent study of a class in Tennessee which found that Black students randomly assigned to at least one Black teacher in grades K-3 are 13 percent more likely to graduate from high school and 19 percent more likely to enroll in college compared to their Black schoolmates who are not assigned to such a teacher.
"It can be really profound,” Irwin said. "There’s that old saying, ‘You can’t be what you can’t see.’ For years, women didn’t see themselves in certain ways because the professions that most women saw themselves in were nurses, teachers and secretaries. Now we’re seeing women who lead countries and are CEOs and doing everything under the sun because historically they weren’t afforded the opportunity and they didn’t have the examples.
"That’s what we need to do for our kids – provide them with examples of people who are going to inspire them to be the best version of themselves.”
Story by Matt Nagle: [email protected]