At URBAN Conference, Grow Your Own-IL Demonstrates the Innovative Potential ofTeacher Education Community (TEC) Spaces (Copy)

Image credit: Urban Conference 2025

By Ines Bellina

On Friday, April 4, 2025, a delegation of Grow Your Own-IL staff and partners presented on one of the most exciting initiatives of the previous year at URBAN Conference in Providence, Rhode Island: strengthening teacher candidate retention through teacher education community-based spaces (TEC, for short). 

The Urban Research-Based Action Network hosts a conference on community-engaged research, a process where research teams involve community members who will receive the impact of said research. This year, the conference topic was “Traveling Together: The Many Paths of Community Engaged Research", which sought to emphasize the importance of shared meaning making.

For the first time, GYO-IL had the opportunity to showcase their newly formed TEC spaces designed to bring together higher education institutions and community-based organizations to recruit, train and retain diverse teachers. The panel consisted of GYO representatives Liza Pappas, D.A. Castro, and Fawn Pochel. They were joined by Laretta Henderson, Dean of Eastern Illinois University; Hollie Jaye, the Dean of Harry S. Truman College; Jennifer Ventimiglia, an Assistant Professor at Northeastern Illinois University; and Ivette Martinez, the Parent Mentor Program Manager of Hispanic American Community Education and Services (HACES) in Waukegan. 

From left to right: Fawn Pochel, GYO-IL Community Engagement Specialist, Laretta Henderson, Dean, Eastern Illinois University, D.A. Castro, GYO-IL Director of Partnership Sustainability, Liza Pappas, GYO-IL Executive Director, Hollie Ware, Dean of Education and Teacher Programs, Truman College, Ivette Martinez, Parent Mentor Program Manager, Jennifer Ventimiglia, Assistant Professor, Northeastern Illinois University

TEC spaces are an initiative of GYO-IL’s Professional Learning Communities, collaborative groups made up of deans and leaders from four-year institutions and community colleges.  GYO-IL asked the PLC members if they were interested in partnering individually with community-based organizations to brainstorm programs and activities that went beyond recruitment and outreach to focus on training and retention. Sixteen of the twenty-two members said yes. 

“Our organizational model prioritizes the role of community-based groups in teacher education,” said Liza Pappas, Executive Director of GYO-IL. “But we also know its aspirational work. Community groups and schools of teacher education operate in different worlds, with different ways of thinking and talking about teachers and teaching. The TEC spaces are a way to start new conversations and imaginings about what constitutes community-connected teachers and teaching and work together could look like.”

Each four-year and two-year institution self-selected their community-based organization partner. Some institutions had an already established relationship with the organizations, but many did not. Collectively, the community partners ended up spanning a wide range of organizations, from church groups to YMCAs to neighborhood centers and social justice non-profits. Initially, the program consisted of three meetings where IHE and CBO partners introduced their local work, clarified roles and responsibilities, received tools for strategic planning, and brainstormed potential strategies to help teacher candidates get involved in their local school communities. “We wanted to make it a light lift for the community-based organizations that we assumed to be doing ground-level work,” explained Castro. 

The meetings also served to flip the paradigm and keep a guiding question in mind: How can community advocates help train teachers? As Castro explained, there is often an expectation that higher education institutions will take the lead when it comes to working with community-based organizations. In TEC Spaces, however, there is an emphasis on how community advocates can offer their insights and skills to empower teacher candidates as they progress through their studies. By changing the approach, the different partnerships began discussing efforts like community mentors for pre-service educators, community services for candidates who may face challenges staying enrolled in school, addendums to syllabi that include local community-based organizations, research projects in local neighborhoods, and joint site-based workshops. Importantly, the TEC Spaces also prioritized relationship-building between IHE and CBOs. 

At the conference, Ivette Martinez and Jennifer Ventimiglia discussed a workshop they co-developed in Lake County for the Parent Mentor volunteers of HACES. To prepare the workshop, Ventimiglia shared insights into Northeastern Illinois University’s academic programs, as well as the financial aid resources it offered. In return, Martinez shared information on the demographics, challenges and needs of the communities HACES serves in Lake County. “This mutual exchange helped build a deeper understanding between our organizations and opened the door for future collaboration,” said Martinez. 

As a result, the workshop they delivered focused on building resiliency for the students in their region. Its content offered a variety of tools and methods to support kids in times of crisis including what to do about potential ICE activity, which has become a prevalent issue in the Lake County area. “This addition proved to be highly relevant, and the session was very well received,” said Martinez. “Parent Mentors actively engaged with the materials and appreciated the thoughtful resources that Jennifer provided.” These included role playing through various scenarios, strategies on helping children navigate difficult issues, and language to help them discuss feelings with their students. 

In addition to hearing from representatives like Martinez and Ventimiglia, conference attendees had the opportunity to participate in a rich discussion about how this could apply to their own missions. “We're not here to prescribe to you what it should look like in your part of the country,” said Castro. “But we want you to wrestle with us in these big and difficult question of partnering and honoring local knowledges from local communities in [teacher education] in a systematic and sustainable way.”

For Martinez, the URBAN Conference gave her an opportunity for more than sharing her work. “I was deeply inspired by the opportunity to engage with like-minded professionals who are equally committed to community organizing. Especially in today’s challenging social and political climate, the experience affirmed to me that community work is incredibly important and necessary.