GUEST POST: Supporting Teachers and Students Post-COVID

October 12, 2021

The American Rescue Plan Act (ARP) has provided school districts hundreds of thousands of dollars to make schools safe again for in-person instruction, help with learning loss and address other needs as we transition back to “normalcy” after a very difficult year and a half of dealing with COVID-19.

Shortly after ARP was signed into law, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, AACTE, created a toolkit to help address the shortage of teachers in our nation’s classrooms.  In it, they suggest to their members that they partner with districts to support residency models, grow-your-own programs, and other innovative approaches to develop a pathway into teaching. 

Through this partnership, teacher candidates benefit from receiving hands-on teaching experience they need for certification, while teachers benefit from having an extra support in the classroom to help with instruction, provide one-on-one instruction for a struggling student or any other number of tasks.  It also helps ensure that teacher candidates are profession-ready when they graduate and the teacher shortage is not exacerbated by this pandemic. 

Recently, AACTE hosted a webinar with their colleagues at GoReact to highlight a successful example of these partnerships in Tennessee titled Educating the Future, Today: How to use emergency relief funds for educator preparation. They hope you take advantage of these resources and consider these models as you plan how to spend your ARP funding.

Mike Rose is the Senior Director of Government Relations and Policy at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.