Inside one Philly elementary school where emergency-certified teachers are welcomed

Gisselle De Peña was working as a bartender earning money to pay her way through East Stroudsburg University when a colleague raised the idea of De Peña becoming a teacher in Philadelphia.

De Peña had once loved the idea of going into education, but when it came time to pick a college major, people told her teaching was a thankless job, poorly paid. The speech language pathology path she had chosen never felt right, though, and so her friend’s suggestion felt like a revelation.

De Peña, 23, collected her college diploma this spring, and this fall began teaching at Forrest Elementary in the Northeast, where she’s one of six emergency-certified teachers on staff.

“It made sense to me, to study and work, to be able to make an impact in the classroom,” De Peña said. “When I was faced with this opportunity, it felt like God literally put it in my lap.”

Emergency-certified teachers are at an all-time high in the district, the majority of them not earning their full certification in the allotted time that allows them to stay in a public school — a situation costly to the district and students.

Having emergency-prepared teachers on staff — especially ones who have no teaching experience — also requires significant support. And the job “is a lot, I’m not going to lie,” De Peña said.

But they can also fill direly needed positions, as De Peña has done. She’s finding her groove teaching fourth graders, and she’s about to start taking classes toward full certification. “I’ve never worked so much but felt so good about it.”

She feels lucky to have landed at Forrest, in the Northeast, De Peña said.

“I fell into the perfect school for me,” she said.

Vance McNear, Forrest’s principal, came into education via an emergency certificate himself after a first career in business. He knows what it means to take an alternate route into the classroom, and he prides himself on surrounding his emergency-prepared teachers with coaching, mentoring, and whatever else they need.

McNear, who spoke to The Inquirer with De Peña and Yvelie Amazan, another Forrest emergency-certified teacher, said he likes what they bring to the school.

“They’re both professionals, and just because they don’t have the certification doesn’t mean they don’t have the skills to teach the class,” McNear said. “Everybody’s learning, everybody’s trying to figure it out and do what’s best for kids. We do what we can for our teachers.”

De Peña is new to teaching, but Amazan spent years as a substitute teacher, many of them at Forrest. McNear persuaded her to get her emergency certification last year, she said, and she became a full-time kindergarten teacher in February 2024. (This year, she’s also teaching fourth grade.)

“It’s wonderful,” Amazan said. “Forrest is my home.”

Classroom management can be tough for emergency-certified teachers — for any new teacher, really — but Amazan had the benefit of her years of substituting.

“I know how it can be like, when you cannot control the class the first day of school, you let it go, you have to walk a lot to take it back,” Amazan said. “So far, I have good control of my class.”

Amazan and De Peña said they support each other and get help from the other teachers on their floor.

“Sometimes, even if I feel like I’m on fire mentally, I walk out into the hallway, and I talk to someone, and it’s like, ‘OK, we’re on the same page.’ They help me work through it and kind of contextualize it, instead of being in my head,” said De Peña, who speaks Spanish — an asset at Forrest, where 30% of the school’s 700-plus students are English-language learners.

Without Amazan and De Peña, McNear might have two vacancies in addition to the two Forrest currently has.

“Just because you have a certification does not necessarily mean you know how to teach 100%,” he said. “You know, you have some teachers who have been teaching for years, and not to be negative, but they’re kind of stuck in their ways. They don’t want to make the necessary movements to do what they need to do to build their own capacity. Not so much with these two teachers here.”