Whether it’s because of the way they are perceived by students, the gender pay gap, the lack of opportunities to rest, or maybe because of something more nefarious, CPS is rapidly losing more and more teachers per year. Several signs point to this being a rising issue throughout school across the city.
A simple Google search shows that CPS schools around the city are losing over 1,000 teachers per year. However, among all this grief and stress, a solution seems to have presented itself: aspiring teachers. Thanks to the Teach Chicago Tomorrow program, high schoolers have the opportunity to create teacher careers for themselves, along with receiving perks for college.
Arthur Dennis, a Recruitment Specialist at Teach Chicago Tomorrow said, “The reason why we have those partnerships is because when you become a college partner at Teach Chicago Tomorrow, there must be something tangible that our scholars receive. Because I as an additional employee am telling CPS students to go to these specific schools. The only way that makes sense ethically is if those schools are giving our students something tangible in return.”
Providing insight on the subject, Taft sophomore Emma Cope, who wants to be a teacher, said, “I’ve always liked helping people learn stuff. It’s just something that I’ve had great fulfillment from and I like learning a lot about certain topics too, so I guess that helps. What’s the point of knowledge if you don’t get to share it?”
This year, Taft announced that the IBCP program was getting two new programs for next year, Engineering and Education. But recently, the Education Program was postponed until the 26-27 school year.
David Fingado, Coordinator of IBCP said, “The teacher education program is delayed by one year, because we need to recruit two sections of students, to have two classes. Which would mean we would need around 56 students in order to run the program. The reason for the delay was they rolled the admissions for the program late, and because they were late, they couldn’t fill up classes in the allotted time.”
Fingado also added, “Teachers need to be replenished in Chicago, it’s not an easy career. It’s not an easy job, but it’s a very rewarding job. I feel like it can be very helpful, and it can be very beneficial for our city kids, for our Chicago kids, to have teachers from CPS. They can understand the student experience more.”
Despite the hopes of few, the sad truth is that this issue also applies beyond the school walls, with CPS losing teachers and other staff members at a steady rate due to issues such as changes to funding as well as layoffs and potential furloughs.
But when all is said and done, as seen happen before many times, the hopefulness of a few just might be able to restart the program in a successful way, creating more teachers to join CPS staff later on, and propel the careers of aspiring teachers into a bright and hopeful future.
