TCALC is an affiliate of the CAPS Network, serving Topeka, Kansas.
As thousands of Kansas students head back into the classroom after their summer breaks, about a dozen Topeka USD 501 students – who want to become teachers – aren’t returning to their brick-and-mortar home high schools.
This unconventional process for these students is part of USD 501’s teaching pathway, a two-year high school program for juniors and seniors who earn up to 60 college dual credits toward a Washburn University associate’s degree in education and gain paid hands-on classroom experience working alongside veteran teachers. These students also get a hiring intent guarantee to teach for USD 501 once they earn their full teaching license. The program is headquartered at the district’s Topeka Center for Advanced Learning and Careers (TCALC), and operates in partnership with USD 501, Washburn University, Washburn Institute of Technology and the Kansas State Department of Education’s (KSDE) teacher licensure team.
Marley Ewing is a senior at Topeka High School and in her second year of the teaching pathway program. She is doing her apprenticeship teaching at USD 501’s Shaner Early Learning Academy preschool.
“What excites me the most is being able to be with the kids from day-to-day and watch them develop and help them and learn from them,” she said. “You can learn a lot from people, and I think the best thing to do would have a whole class to learn from and to teach and grow with.”
Elissa Jones, USD 501’s teaching pathway instructor at the Topeka USD 501’s Topeka Center for Advanced Learning and Careers (TCALC), said she’s been amazed and gratified to see the growth and the level of commitment of last school year’s apprentices as they begin their second year of the program.
“It was quite a big change for them to come into this very full-time intensive program, and to have these apprenticeship hours and watching how they were able to grow into that role of the teacher while also being a college student,” she said. “It’s just been wonderful to watch.”
The youth apprentices spend half their day taking core and elective courses, often taught by Washburn University professors, at USD 501’s TCALC, and then spend the other half of their day in their assigned classroom with a veteran teacher. They’re able to return to their home high school building for after-school extracurricular activities.
At a recent ceremony at TCALC to recognize this year’s youth apprentices, Dr. Renee Nugent, KSDE’s deputy commissioner of the division of learning services, told the apprentices that being part of the program is an “honor and responsibility.”
“It is my hope, and I believe it will come to fruition, that you will impact students to read and to think and to create,” she said, adding that she’s excited to see some of the apprentices wanting to follow in the footsteps of a parent who is a teacher.
One of those apprentices is David Verdugo, a junior at Highland Park High School and in his first year of the youth apprenticeship program. He said he’s working with elementary-age students at Scott Dual Language Magnet where his mother teaches and where he’ll be immersed in using the Spanish and English languages.
“I know I want to teach high school, but being able to teach fifth grade is also showing me how I can teach at a younger age,” he said. “It’s also going to boost my Spanish skills.”
Verdugo said he wants to inspire students the way teachers inspired him to want to learn more than just academics.
“I want to be able to give students life lessons they can carry on into the future and eventually, if they want to become teachers, to inspire their future students or just learn to live a good life.”
Also a first-year youth apprentice, Nick Boaz, a junior at Topeka High, is excited about getting to be in a classroom of fourth-graders in the district’s Whitson Elementary.
“I like the ideas they have and the many thoughts they have. That’s when they’re developing what they feel and how they think about the world,” Boaz said. “That’s why I want to go into teaching. I want to make them want to believe and want them to think. I’m also really excited to be in an environment with another really experienced teacher.”
Jones said the youth apprenticeship program gives students who might not otherwise be able to follow a traditional path to a bachelor’s degree in education the opportunity to become a fully licensed teacher.
“We are cultivating a teaching force that looks like and sounds like and understands our community,” she said. “It’s a beautiful thing to look at this group and see how well we’re already having success.”
