About 200 people teaching at Indian Prairie District 204 schools are graduates of the place that now employs them.
That means one out of every 10 educators among the 2,000-plus they employ may have eaten in the same school cafeterias, worn the same school colors and had some of the same teachers as the students who now sit in their classrooms.
“In a lot of ways, it’s coming home,” said Katie Popp, a Waubonsie Valley High School graduate who taught high school social studies Neuqua Valley until becoming president of the Indian Prairie Education Association teachers union. “It’s the familiarity and support system. My teachers became my colleagues.”
Those are real benefits for new teachers, according to Indian Prairie officials, who want to see the number of alumni educators number climb.
The Grow Your Own Teachers program, a joint effort between the district and the teachers union, is designed to encourage students to consider education as a profession and possibly one day return to their alma mater on the opposite side of the classroom.
They hope to fuel interest through student clubs, social media campaigns and information fairs/events, such as the career fair they’re holding Tuesday at which students can talk to representatives from Aurora University, North Central College, Illinois State University and the University of Illinois about their teaching programs.
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“We’re proud to know we can work with the (Indian Prairie Education Association) in not only serving the needs of their membership but to grow and shape and mold future educators,” said Louis Lee, district assistant superintendent of human resources.
Popp said familiarity with the school, the community, the support system and some of the teachers puts a homegrown teacher at an advantage.
There is also a benefit that “you have a teacher that went through a similar academic experience as a kid” and may connect better with you as a student as a result, she said.
While the classes a teacher took as a child or teen may have changed, the general expectations of what it takes to be an Indian Prairie student are likely similar. “You understand the expectations because you grew up there,” she said.
Both Popp and Lee said that encouraging students to become teachers also addresses the fact that there is a nationwide shortage of teachers, which hasn’t posed a problem for the district but could in the future. As of late August, there were about a dozen D204 jobs not yet filled, most of them in special education.
The Illinois State Board of Education is also looking for ways to stem the teacher shortage, which is particularly problem in the southern part of the state, offering $1.5 million in grant money to support 10 regional agencies in their efforts to recruit and support future teachers. About $30,000 went to Indian Prairie for its initiatives, Lee said.
In addition to bringing in alumni teachers who are already familiar with the district, it’s hoped the Grow Your Own program could help increase the diversity of its teaching staff in the future.
About 12% of its teachers right now are minorities, with about 26% of the hires they made in the 2019-20 school year fell into that category, Lee said. The numbers for this year will be announced at a future school board meeting, he said.
More than 30 teachers and administrators worked on the Grow Your Own program this summer, looking at the short- and long-term goals they want to achieve.
One thing they’ve initiated is a district Twitter account, 204 Grow Your Own Teachers, in which they post teachers’ answers to the question: “I became an educator because…”
The district’s World At Work career exploration curriculum for elementary school students will dive deeper into teaching and why it’s a good career option, Lee said. In a video Indian Prairie posted about Grown Your Own Teachers, Lee talks about how they want to provide students “tangible experiences that normally would not be found until they went to college.”
The high school student club Future Educators Association will expand into Indian Prairie middle schools as another means of nurturing early career interest, Popp said.
Additionally, the district is working on adding more high school courses related to teaching as a career, Popp said. Right now, the district offers introductory education or early childhood classes for those considering education as a future job.
“Sometimes it’s that five-minute conversation with a kid that makes all the difference (in their career path),” Popp said.