Paying Student Teachers

Last spring, Pennsylvania launched a program to pay student teachers, and the new budget from Governor Josh Shapiro proposes major increases in funding for that program.

As a certified old fart, I shake my fist at the clouds and mutter, "Back in my day, we paid our college tuition for that semester, just like any other, and did our student teacher thing." As a cooperating teacher, I would occasionally hear one of my sixty gazillion mentees say that they really ought to be paid for doing all this work and bite my tongue so that I did not say, "Child, you have made twice as much work for me while you are here."

However, I suspect this is one of those "Okay, boomer" moments.

For one thing, my college tuition for my student teaching semester was about $1,300. That included an apartment at the college's field office (then located at the corner of Superior and E. 9th in Cleveland). I don't remember what the cost of gas for our commute was, but a quick google suggests it was about 79 cents a gallon.

For another thing, Pennsylvania has a teacher supply problem. It's not just that the pipeline has dried up-- the pipeline is actually broken, with many schools having chopped away at their teacher prep programs. If a million high school seniors decided this year that they want to be teachers, there wouldn't be enough college capacity to educate them. So encouraging students to pursue teaching is a double must, both to increase the teacher supply and to coax teacher prep program back to life.

For still another thing, as we have documented at great length, a lot of folks have worked really hard to make teaching just as unattractive as possible, from reducing teaching to the job of implementing canned programs, to trumpeting that teachers are just a bunch of groomers and pedophiles, to telling teachers to strip their rooms of even the simplest of messages ("Everyone is welcome here" must go).

The program aimed to give student teachers a $10K stipend-- $15K is they took assignment in an underserved school. In return, the proto-teachers agree to work in Pennsylvania for three years. The original funding was for a total $10 million, with an online application portal-- and it was used up within hours of being made available.

Student teachers themselves called the stipends "life changing." It seems particularly useful for those who are later-in-life students. One such student was quoted by PSEA saying, "I feel seen."

That's a part of the value of the program-- it treats proto-teachers as if they are special and important. Lots of college students struggle with lots of responsibilities and work while they are studying, and I am perfectly okay with singling out future teachers as deserving a special kind of support, because lord knows we need a new approach to recruitment to replace the old one of Hope We Get Lucky.

There's a proposal out there to up the funding to the program up to $50 million, and I think that would be money well spent. Pennsylvania needs the teachers.