ARIZONA — The Arizona Department of Education (ADE) is expanding its teacher apprenticeship and mentoring program after receiving a $300,000 grant from the National Center for Grow Your Own.
Superintendent Tom Horne says the apprenticeship and mentoring program helps address the state's teacher shortage. The ADE will receive $300,000 over the next two years to expand the current program.
"This is excellent news because recruiting, training and supporting teachers is vital and the teacher shortage has reached catastrophic proportions. These funds will be used to expand our already-robust efforts [azed.gov] to help bring more teachers into the profession and retain those valuable educators currently in the classroom," Horne said in a statement. “We have developed and implemented numerous 'alternate pathways' for those who did not go to education college but have the content knowledge needed to teach. We must also continue to push for more help for educators by increasing teacher pay using State Land Trust funds with no new taxes, and ensuring school administrators support teachers on classroom discipline, the two major issues that teachers cite as reasons to leave the profession.”
According to the ADE, one of the goals for the project is to increase the number of fully licensed teachers.
This grant will fund 100 apprentices.
