MISSION & PROGRAMS

GYO Mural at Harriet Beecher Stowe Elementary School

Grow Your Own Illinois (GYO-IL) recruits, supports and encourages individuals who are committed to classroom teaching in or near their home communities. Our goal is for the Illinois teacher population to reflect the rich racial diversity of its students. In order to achieve that goal, we offer a full range of tools to our candidates, including financial and academic assistance, social-emotional support, and culturally sustaining instructional strategies, so they can attain a teaching license. We believe that Illinois students, their communities, and the teacher candidates are all enriched by this process.

A rainbow-tinted photograph of a small group of GYO teacher candidates stand together.

Our Mission

GYO-IL’s mission is to support racially diverse and community-connected individuals to become certified teachers in hard-to-staff schools and positions in order to improve the educational opportunities and outcomes for their students.

OUR STORY

GYO-IL evolved from the work of two separate grassroots organizations in Chicago, recruiting teachers for their understaffed local schools.

Back in the early 2000s, two organizations were working separately on this issue. One group, Logan Square Neighborhood Association (now Palenque LSNA), trained local parents (mostly Black and Latina mothers) to support students and teachers in classrooms. Another group, Action Now drew attention to teacher turnover by emphasizing that teachers who weren't connected to the community often didn't stay long at their schools.

Building Power

In 2004, these two groups joined forces with three more community organizations under the umbrella of the Chicago Learning Campaign (CLC) to build political power and push for a new law to support local community members to become teachers. The strategy paid off in 2005 when Illinois passed the Grow Your Own Teacher Education Act.

Illinois gave a $1.5 million planning grant to CLC, which had established itself as the non-profit organization Grow Your Own Illinois, to develop the initiative outside of Chicago.

In the next three years, monies were dispersed from the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) to “consortia” collaborations of community groups, school districts, and universities across Illinois. In 2011, the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) replaced ISBE as the fiscal agent, and by 2012, the GYO program had expanded to 16 different consortia locations. In addition to eight in Chicago, there were active consortia in Alton, Carbondale, East St. Louis, Peoria, the Quad Cities, Rockford, Springfield, and Chicago’s south suburbs.

Black and white photo with pink and tan border depicts a Latina teacher candidate at a conference

From Setbacks to Success

However, state funding was inconsistent from year to year and the 2015 state budget impasse had disastrous implications for many nonprofits, including GYO-IL. During the two-year budget crisis, GYO programs were forced to shutter, except for those in Chicago. The Chicago programs were consolidated into one.

By 2018, funding began to be restored, and in late 2019, GYO-IL was named the administrator of the state’s GYO grant program, replacing IBHE. Currently, GYO-IL proudly funds and guides 7 locally-run consortia programs across the state, graduating approximately 220 new teachers.

In its short tenure as the administrator of the GYO grant, GYO-IL has placed a new emphasis on the role of community colleges in preparing teachers creating the Diverse Male Teacher Initiative (DMTI), which gives scholarships to men of color to take the classes they need at community colleges before entering teacher licensure programs and the Southern Illinois Teacher Transfer Pathway, which helps students at John A. Logan College prepare to transfer to Southern Illinois University-Carbondale to complete their teaching degree.

GYO-IL has also expanded its focus past its grant programs to work alongside higher education partners to assist in fortifying the teacher pipeline. It convenes university and college leaders through monthly professional learning communities to identify, share, and implement strategies to bring more diverse and community-connected teachers into the profession. Looking ahead to 2025, GYO-IL and 22 institutions of higher education (IHEs) are launching a state-wide marketing and outreach campaign to encourage more people from different backgrounds to apply to teacher pathways and programs . Most recently, GYO-IL has invited community based organizations to partner with IHEs to maximize the impact of the campaign locally and to have strategic discussions about reimagining and preparing community-connected and centered teachers and teaching.

GYO-IL oversees three programs for teacher candidates: