New GYO Teacher Transfer Pathway Scholarship Program Helps Nontraditional Students Enroll in Community College

January 7th, 2025

By Ines Bellina

Welcome dinner with Cohort 1 recipients, JALC leadership, and GYO-IL staff

Grow Your Own Illinois (GYO-IL) has enjoyed fruitful partnerships and collaborations with 32 universities and colleges in Illinois for the past five years. Two hundred ninety-four GYO candidates have graduated from four-year institutions and embarked on a teaching career within their regions. Despite these achievements, GYO-IL understood that there was still room for growth when it came to finding nontraditional teacher candidates. 

How could GYO-IL better attract students who accurately reflect the diversity of their respective communities? And what kind of support did those candidates need to successfully embark on a new professional path?

Liza Pappas, Executive Director of GYO-IL, thought focusing more on the role of community colleges could help answer these questions. 

“Community colleges serve both racially and economically diverse candidates within their designated districts. Both of these characteristics well align with our core values of serving diverse community-connected candidates in local areas. Historically, we have not had an overt strategy to recruit, retain, or support education students at the community college to transfer into teacher licensure programs. We are now embarking on a plan to do so.”

Cohort 1 Laptop Distribution event at JALC.

GYO-IL tapped Camino Group, a bilingual and bicultural Chicago organization that helps schools and other organizations create accessible and equitable career pathways for nontraditional students. One challenge potential GYO candidates faced was not being “transfer-ready” for four-year universities, either due to incomplete prerequisite courses or not meeting the minimum GPA requirements for education programs. For Felipe Pérez, founder of Camino Group, the community college system could help make a teaching career more accessible to the parents, paraprofessionals, and community leaders that GYO seeks to serve. 

“A focus on four-year institutions put the starting line for the path to teaching too far out of reach for the folks we were trying to reach,” Pérez explained. “Community college is the right starting point for folks with whom we're working.” 

Program recruitment event at Carbondale Middle School.

Thus, with development and implementation help from Camino Group, GYO-IL launched the Southern Illinois Teacher Transfer Pathway in 2023. After talking with current and past GYO candidates, faculty and staff at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale (SIU-C), community college leadership and instructors, and other community representatives, GYO-IL created a new scholarship program for paraprofessionals and career changers who would benefit from attending John A. Logan before finishing their studies at SIU-C. 

“Liza and Felipe were excited to help us connect with more potential instructors in southern Illinois,” said Nathan D. Arnett, Assistant Provost of Academic Affairs at John A. Logan. “GYO is excellent at pulling people together and supporting their efforts. I am one voice among many who are working toward increasing the awareness of teaching as a profession and providing the opportunity to initiate the pathway of teaching.” 

For Stacy D. Thompson, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies and Curriculum at SIU-C, the program provides a smoother process for those interested in the profession. “SIU was excited to join this initiative aimed at recruiting underrepresented groups into the teacher education program. These opportunities are not always visible to those within the school systems, so being able to create a clear pathway and provide access was truly exciting.” Plus, she said, the program can assist the University’s own efforts in trying to address the teacher shortage in Illinois.

The scholarship is geared towards candidates who enroll at John A. Logan and work with an advisor to complete the requirements to transfer to an education degree program at SIU-C to earn their teaching license. It covers tuition, a $1,000 book stipend, a new laptop on loan, and individualized transfer support. Once the candidate successfully finishes their course of studies, they can apply to the School of Education at SIU-C. Though the Teacher Transfer Pathway program only covers tuition at the community college level, students can apply for other SIU-C scholarships when they are ready to transfer, including GYO-supported scholarships.

GYO-IL teamed up with Carbondale Elementary School District to support recruitment and professional development efforts, connecting the Teacher Transfer Pathway program with potential scholars. “The district is a key partner in ensuring that our program is community-rooted and community-serving,” said Pérez. While 95% of teachers in the Carbondale Elementary School District identify as white, the teacher candidates GYO supports look more like the district’s diverse student body. 

The Carbondale Elementary School District also employs many of the candidates throughout the program. They work at local schools and organizations as teacher assistants, special ed classroom aides, part-time coaches, summer camp counselors, youth group volunteers, and other similar roles. Because their family members often attend these institutions, they are deeply invested in their success. 

Alana Joines is another paraprofessional who has her heart set on a teaching career. After her husband was diagnosed with a life-threatening cancer, she left her job in finance for a role that would allow her to take care of her spouse and her special-needs son. Carbondale Middle School hired her to help in a 7th-grade special education classroom. The teacher she worked with was a GYO graduate. He encouraged her to pursue teaching and put her in touch with the organization. 

Receiving the scholarship was crucial for Joines’ educational journey. “I have been able to complete my associate [degree] at John A. Logan and not had to worry about how to pay for school, given all our financial challenges. Not only has the scholarship been an amazing help, the support from the JALC and SIU-C teams has been amazing! I have referred four friends to the program.”

In its second year, the Teacher Transfer Pathway program refined its recruitment efforts by partnering closely with the local school district. As a result, the second cohort of scholarship recipients is older than traditional college students, more diverse, and has unique professional backgrounds compared to traditional college students. 

“We communicate to applicants that we are looking for exactly them,” Pérez said. “If you're a 44-year-old paraprofessional who's been out of school for 20 years, we think you will be an amazing teacher. We think that the life experience you bring here is such an asset. We understand that you may be intimidated because you haven’t been in school for a while. We want to be here for you, and we want to invest in you.” 

Though the program is relatively new, Pérez hopes Grow Your Own Illinois can replicate it at other community colleges throughout the state. “There are a wealth of prospective teachers out there, and the work is not about convincing them to teach. The work is about offering accessible pathways for them to earn their teaching licenses. We've had great interest, great applicants, and great energy.” GYO-IL is now encouraging all of its programs to include a community college partner to allow for more opportunities for two- and four-year co-recruitment and co-advising work.