‘Grow your own’ programs train high schoolers to become teachers. West Chester is joining the movement to combat the teacher shortage.

Imere Williams wanted to be a teacher at least since the fourth grade.

His mother saved a class assignment where he penned his career aspiration. And it never changed.

“The thought that I’m gonna be a teacher in four years is something that really ignites this huge, blazing fire inside of me, and I can’t wait to start,” Williams wrote in 2020, the year he graduated from Boys Latin, a Philadelphia charter school.

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It was part of his essay in the book Dear Grad: Words of Wisdom and Encouragement for Your Next Journey, which features pieces from dignitaries and celebrities, including Barack and Michelle Obama, Bono, Tom Hanks, and Lady Gaga, as well as students like Williams.

Now, Williams, 21, of West Philadelphia, is in the teacher preparation program at West Chester University, helping to ignite that fire in others at a time when fewer young people are going into teaching and too few are Black, like himself.

He’s part of West Chester’s newly launched PRIZE (Partnering in Raising Inclusive, Zealous Educators), which aims to help school districts “grow their own” teachers, while boosting the profile of a profession that’s taken hits in recent years, said Desha Williams (no relation to Imere), dean of West Chester’s College of Education and Social Work.

“We don’t do a good enough job telling our stories,” Williams said. “We do the work, we celebrate students’ accomplishments, and then we just get up and do it again the next year.”

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Experts say there are other reasons teaching is seen as less attractive: an emphasis on standardized testing that’s taken the joy out of the profession and created distrust of the education system; classrooms that are targets for political attacks; less-than-stellar pay; and tough working conditions that have only gotten worse with the pandemic. Teachers themselves often aren’t encouraging young people to follow in their footsteps.

Plus, students of color, many of whom have had poor experiences in school, are less likely to want to return to teach.

“Unfortunately education is not one of those career opportunities that is highly valued or really has a good reputation in terms of salary, in terms of other kinds of benefits,” said Jennifer Johnson, an assistant professor in Temple University’s College of Education and Human Development. “We just don’t elevate those positions in society the way that they should be, as foundational to every other field that we have.”

She sees the need for a national campaign to boost interest, similar to that of the Marines. Only in this case, it would be “the few, the proud, the teachers,” she said.

Nationally, the number of people completing teacher education programs from 2011-12 to 2019-20 fell 25%, according to federal data, with steeper drops in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. While the percentage of students of color in teacher preparation programs nationally has grown, in Pennsylvania, classes have remained overwhelmingly white. In 2018-19, just 5% were Black and 4% Hispanic.

West Chester’s PRIZE program aims to change that. High school students will take dual-enrollment classes in teacher education through West Chester at no charge. They’ll get internship opportunities and have mentors. The cost of the classes will be covered by West Chester and the host school district. They will be offered in person or online, removing transportation as a barrier. A summer program where students can spend time on campus is in the works, Williams said.

If students maintain a minimum of a 3.0 high school GPA and get a C or better in the classes, West Chester automatically will admit them, Williams said.

During college, they will return to their host district for observations and student teaching and hopefully a job after graduation, Williams said.

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Pam Grossman, dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, said “grow your own” programs have been successful.

“Most people teach within 30 miles of where they went to high school,” she said. “If you recruit locally, people are more likely to stay.”

Recent interest in the programs began in 2005 when Illinois adopted a statewide effort, said Amaya Garcia, deputy director of the PreK-12 program at New America, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C. The big growth came about a decade later when Washington instituted a competitive grant program, followed by similar efforts in Texas and Minnesota, she said.

In 2020, 19 states funded some type of “grow your own” program, she said. Now that number is 31, plus Washington.

Pennsylvania and New Jersey are not among them.

Juliet Curci, assistant dean of college access and persistence in Temple’s education school, says that has to change. There’s an effort underway to get Pennsylvania to contract with the National Center for Grow Your Own, a recently launched network that was started by a former Tennessee department of education official, she said. The network is pushing for states to help create more paths for people to become teachers for free — and get paid while doing it, by being employed as a paraprofessional. (The Philadelphia School District has partnered with several local universities to put paraprofessionals interested in becoming teachers through college at no cost to them. There are 84 enrolled.)

While there are some “grow your own” programs in the state — including one that Temple started in partnership with the Philadelphia public schools in fall 2018 — coordination and funding are needed, she said.

Temple’s program, called Temple Education Scholars, has served more than 60 high school students, with about one-third going into teacher preparation programs or saying they intend to, Curci said. High school seniors spend the mornings at their host districts and take courses in the afternoon at Temple. The district and university cover the cost. Students also get mentoring and advising, she said.

Sydney Smith, 22, a Temple senior, is in line to become one of the program’s first graduates this spring. While she had an interest in education before joining the program as a senior at Philadelphia High School for Girls, she said it confirmed her choice.

An early childhood education major, she’s student-teaching at Philadelphia’s Moffet Elementary and wants to continue in the city public school when she graduates.

“I just want to give back and work in the community I was raised in,” she said.

But there aren’t enough like her. Temple has more slots in its program than are currently filled. (Ten are currently enrolled.)

Kennett Consolidated School District in Chester County is the first district that signed up to partner with West Chester.

Like other school districts, the 4,000-student Kennett Consolidated has seen the number of applicants for teaching positions decline, and some jobs, particularly in special education, become harder to fill, said Superintendent Dusty Blakey.

West Chester’s program, he said, fits with the district’s larger mission of helping high school students see career relevance in their classes and try out a potential job path before college.

At the same time, the students will grow and learn in Kennett’s culture and “hit the ground running” when they are hired, he said. The district has agreed to employ at least three program graduates per year.

The first group of high school students will begin in January. About a half dozen are expected to be enrolled, Williams said. Chester Upland in Delaware County and Colonial School District in Montgomery County also are participating, she said.

Kennett High School senior Cecelia Perrotti, 17, of Landenberg, had already eyed a teaching career and West Chester, but got even more excited when she heard the dean and Imere Williams speak about the program.

“The goal is to raise inclusive and zealous educators,” Perrotti said. “That’s just like my dream job right there.”

It’s been Williams’ dream, too. His fourth-grade assignment on a poster board was titled Read All About Me, answering questions like his favorite colors and animal, as well as what he’d like to be when he grows up.

“A teacher.”

“I kept it because that’s when he started showing his identity and passion and what he wanted to do,” said Denise Curry, 55, Williams’ mother.

That Williams wanted to be a teacher that young is unusual, given his own experience at James Rhoads Elementary in his West Philadelphia neighborhood. He said he was bullied and still has a bump on his head from where another student hit him.

But then he went on to Boys Latin for middle and high school. Not only did he feel safe, but the school gave him opportunities, he said, that set him up for success. He became a member of student government, joined the Latin Club, and was named one of two student representatives on the Philadelphia Board of Education, sitting next to former Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. at meetings.

Boys Latin is also where he encountered his first Black male educator, Mikal Anderson, his sixth-grade history teacher, who had a profound effect on him.

“He told me to walk in my greatness,” recalled Williams, the first in his family to go to college.

When he graduates, he intends to teach in Philadelphia, ideally at Boys Latin.

In the Dear Grad book, Williams described himself as “a fearless leader,” one who has spent his life in the inner city amid violence and poverty.

“I almost lost my father a few years ago,” he writes. “He was shot seven times.”

He wants to use his “passion for education to help students want to do better and strive, to one day stop this cycle of gun violence and adversity,” he wrote.

Eventually, he’d like to open his own school.

But even then, he said, he won’t stop teaching.