SAN ANTONIO – Sarah Vargas didn’t always love school. When she got to Travis Early College High School, she found a program that allows children to earn an associate’s degree in education by the time they graduate.
“I had a teacher who really helped me, and because of that I knew I wanted to be that teacher for somebody else,” Vargas said.
It’s one of the ways local school districts are trying to deal with teacher shortages. KSAT reported on a Clark High School program for students interested in education.
Travis Early College High School takes it a step further by guaranteeing the Associate of Arts in Teaching (AAT) degree. The San Antonio Independent School District started the program three years ago, and the first round of students is about to graduate in late May.
“This was always my dream, and now it feels like I can actually pursue it,” Vargas said. “And thank goodness I did, because my life has completely changed since then.”
Later this month, Vargas will be in the first group of Travis students to graduate high school with that degree.
With hours of shadowing SAISD teachers under her belt, she knows exactly what she wants.
“I want to teach early elementary. Second is kind of my dream grade,” she said. “I plan on getting my bilingual certification at UTSA, so I definitely want to support bilingual small students.”
Since she’s graduating from the Travis Early College High School program, she’ll only need two more years of college, and in that time, she now gets to become a paid apprentice.
“With our registered apprenticeship, the part that we’re doing is having the ability to folks to learn while they earn,” said James Harrell, SAISD chief of human capital management. ”So they’ll be full-time employees, they’ll earning their TRS credit, they’ll learning how to teach.”
Harrell oversees the education training programs at SAISD, which was just certified by the U.S. Department of Labor as a registered apprenticeship program.
“We’re one of the handful in the state of Texas and the first in the region,” Harrell said. “The great thing about this is we’ll be able to pursue federal funding to continue to strengthen this pipeline.”
The new ability for SAISD to pursue funding from the Department of Labor will allow it to continue paying for positions that both train students to become teachers and support students.
The Texas Legislature has begun prioritizing this type of funding, which is available to all districts. This is called the “Grow Your Own PREP Allotment.”
The Texas Education Agency has also awarded SAISD and other local districts funding to launch innovative staffing models to deal with teacher shortages across the state.
Fifteen students, such as Vargas, will become paid paraprofessionals next year in San Antonio, and then teacher residents. The only other two students graduating from the program are pursuing educational opportunities outside San Antonio.
Those 15 graduates can then transfer directly to the University of Texas at San Antonio and Texas A&M University-San Antonio, which have worked with SAISD to ensure a seamless transition between their AAT and their respective teaching credential programs.
All the while, they will remain employed in SAISD’s apprenticeship program.
“Sarah, whenever she is going to enter into her teacher residency, she won’t have to take all the certification tests that other folks do,” Harrell said. “She’ll have to spend, to be a certified bilingual teacher, very little to nothing out of pocket, and she’ll be paid the whole time she finishes school.”
“It has saved us so much money! Tuition is crazy these days, and so being able to save those first two years of core content makes such a difference,” Vargas said. “Not only are you getting so much financial support while you’re pursuing your degree, but you’re going to keep getting that support from apprenticeship programs, from different scholarship programs that the school presents you with.”
When Vargas is ready to lead her own classroom in just a couple of years, she will return to SAISD.
“I see the impact that it makes and the need that is present,” Vargas said. “There truly is no job more important than teaching.”
Harrell said the impact on SAISD’s teacher shortage will be significant.
“For the Travis students, in just a few short years, they’ll be the largest producer of bilingual and certified special education teachers for our district,” Harrell said.
Harrell said he wants interested students to know they don’t have to go to Travis to get into the apprenticeship program. However, anyone entering the apprenticeship must already have their Associate of Arts in Teaching (AAT) degree.
For information on the high school student pipeline to teaching, contact the SAISD Enrollment Office at enroll@saisd.net or call 210-554-2660.
Read also: