One answer to the teacher shortage is growing your own. Here’s how this high school is the first in Philly to do so.

Across the country, there’s a teacher shortage so acute that in some towns, classes can go an entire year without permanent educators. Districts are offering signing bonuses, building housing just for teachers, and turning to remote staff to instruct students.

But Noelle Oliver, 16, thinks one answer to the teaching crisis can be found in Philadelphia — at her school, Science Leadership Academy at Beeber.

SLA Beeber just launched a career and technical education (CTE) program aimed at building the teacher pipeline, where high school students learn about educational theory, enroll in college courses, and even instruct younger peers in classes and small groups.

Oliver, an SLA Beeber junior, thought she wanted to become an interior designer. But after just a month spent as a teaching assistant, she’s now contemplating becoming a middle school math teacher.

“I love it so much,” Oliver said of teaching. The students she works with “can be wild, but they’re so funny.”

In 2020, it fell to SLA Beeber assistant principal Gabe Kuriloff to take a student assistant teaching program the school inherited from SLA Center City and make it its own.

A conversation with Juliet Curci, a Temple University education professor who focuses on college access and persistence, got Kuriloff thinking.

“She said, ‘We’re having a really hard time getting students; teaching in general has a recruitment challenge,’” Kuriloff recalls.

The moment was right: There was growing awareness across the country, and in Pennsylvania, an acknowledgment about the shortage of Black teachers specifically. People working on the problem were thinking about where and how to plant grow-your-own teaching programs.

SLA Beeber was an obvious choice.

“This is a wonderful place to be doing this work — a progressive school, a project-based learning environment where you have highly capable, motivated students that are very diverse in their academic experience. We are just a really fertile ground for doing this work,” said Kuriloff.

At first, there were Temple dual-enrollment courses, pilot classes taught by Kuriloff and history teacher Mary Connaghan — foundations of education, and the history of sociology and education. Through a partnership with the Center for Black Educator Development, the focus was an “education for liberation” curriculum, teaching students to think critically and work against injustice.

Kuriloff and others interested in the idea “went to anyone in the city who would talk to us and saying, we’re going to build a teaching program, a real [career and technical education] program.” The idea was to create a full, formal program in K-12 education, which would require students to complete 1,080 hours of coursework and related experience, to possibly start them on the path to becoming teachers while still in high school.

By last spring, changes to the school code made by the Pennsylvania legislature created the possibility for such a program. A handful are now in place, with SLA Beeber’s the only such program in Philadelphia.

Inside a second-floor classroom at SLA Beeber, teacher Njemele Tamala Anderson circulated among a class of 24 11th graders delving into education theory. The class is the city’s first cohort of K-12 education CTE students, juggling high school and dual-enrollment college classes plus practical experience, and working directly with the school’s lower-school students at lunch periods, in classes, study halls, and small-group tutoring sessions.

As Anderson’s students dissected scholar Gloria Ladson-Billings’ work, she encouraged them to think critically, to see how their future work might affect young people like them, how culturally relevant curriculum can help bridge gaps.

“It’s important as future teachers that you see their future as being bright, even if they can’t see it for themselves,” Anderson said.

Frankly, Kuriloff and Connaghan were slightly nervous at the start of this school year, when the juniors met the sometimes-messy reality of working with students not much younger than they are.

They didn’t need to worry — after one lunch period, they bombarded Kuriloff with ideas: Can you get us chalk and art supplies so we can make recess more meaningful? Can we do a Google Form to encourage students to sign up for study groups?

“It’s student initiative, just because they want to make the school a better place,” said Connaghan.

Not everyone in the program wants to become a teacher; that’s not the only point, organizers say.

“We’re not just selling teaching itself, we’re selling being part of a change community,” said Kuriloff. “You may not become a teacher, but you will go out into the world with this consciousness and this mindset — and you will be powerful.”

Jayden Latimer isn’t planning on majoring in education, for instance, but he is relishing thinking about what gets taught, about encouraging the students he works with to learn meaningful lessons in ways that reflect their lived experiences.

“I just feel like the system needs more truth to the youth,” Latimer said.

SLA Beeber is a majority-Black school in Overbrook, and the idea of developing a culture of teachers of color is exciting, said Oliver.

“Philadelphia’s seen a lot of darkness recently; this could be some light that we need,” she said. “With this program, I could see so many more Black teachers being in the Philadelphia School District, in every school district around the world.”

Though SLA Beeber has Philadelphia’s first CTE K-12 education program, the plan is for it to become a model, spreading to other schools. Olney High is interested; charter schools may join, as well.

Ansharaye Hines works closely with Kuriloff and SLA Beeber students as the Center for Black Educator Development’s assistant director of high school programming. Watching the school’s teaching program take off has been “humbling, exciting, overwhelming,” she said.

Growing up in Philadelphia, Hines said, she had a revelation when she attended Central High and her teachers believed in her and her classmates. They held her to a high bar.

“The thing that I felt when they expected me to be excellent was different than I felt in other schools,” Hines said. That’s what she and the SLA Beeber staff want to build for all students, here and in the wider world.

“I imagine a universe where Philly is a hotbed of teacher development and growth,” Kuriloff said. “Imagine Philly as a community where people come to teach.”