CASPER, Wyo. — The Wyoming Department of Education is preparing to launch a pilot teacher apprenticeship program and eventually offer it across the state to help school districts struggling to get educators into classrooms.
The idea for the apprenticeship program is one of the first things new Wyoming Superintendent Brian Schroeder started working on when he took the helm in February after the resignation of former Superintendent Jillian Balow. During his first few weeks in office, a district superintendent informed Schroeder her school district was expecting to lose up to 50 teachers before the start of the 2022-2023 school year.
“Her question to me, [me] being new but [her district] in desperation was, ‘How do I replace that many teachers next year?’” Schroeder said in an interview Wednesday.
Schroeder had just read something about Tennessee implementing a teacher apprenticeship program and he asked the district superintendent whether an apprenticeship program like that might help.
“She said, ‘Absolutely, that would be amazing, please get it done,’” Schroeder said.
Wyoming education officials then attended a conference in Washington D.C. where Tennessee officials shared about the new apprenticeship program there.
“What they had for three to four years straight was a teacher shortage of between 1,000 and 1,200 teachers every year in the state of Tennessee,” Schroeder said.
One county in Tennessee then implemented an apprenticeship program that proved successful and the state then decided to expand the program statewide.
“They got the Department of Labor to register it and and they have so solved their teacher shortage problem that they went from between 1,000-1,200 teacher vacancies every year to now they have a waiting list of folks waiting to get into the classroom,” Schroeder said. “So it’s been highly successful and then maybe one of the best parts is Tennessee is not territorial or possessive. They’re all too happy to share it with the rest of the states.”
After the conference, Schroeder pushed his team at the Wyoming Department of Education to get started right away to look into implementing a similar program in Wyoming.
“I admonished them, ‘Let’s not drag our feet on this,’” Schroeder said. “We want a quality product so we don’t want to go so super fast that we rush this, but we also don’t want to drag our feet.”
The Wyoming Department of Education presented its initial plans to Gov. Mark Gordon on Wednesday and Schroeder said the governor seemed enthusiastic. The WDE is looking to partner with three schools to launch the pilot apprenticeship program this fall. Which schools those will be has yet to be determined, but the WDE plan to work with a small, medium and large school during the pilot phase of the program, according to Schroeder.
The idea of the program is to create a pathway to help people become teachers who might otherwise face hurdles in doing so.
“Bus drivers, food services people, people in the community who have maybe a college degree, but they don’t have a teaching degree — this would be a pathway for them to get in which would be very exciting, very inspiring because we all know people who aren’t classroom teachers, but who have the gift of teaching,” Schroeder said.
The degree to which school districts are struggling to find teachers varies but it is something many are dealing with, Schroeder said, noting he has visited over 15 districts in Wyoming since becoming superintendent. The new apprenticeship program wouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all model but would leave room for local control, according to Schroeder. The WDE is also trying to learn from what school districts are already doing to try and address teacher shortages to help share best practices across the state.
“When I came back from [Tennessee’s presentation], I was super inspired because I was once a classroom teacher and a principal and I feel the angst, I feel their pain,” Schroeder said. “This does not bode well for our students if we don’t respond to this crisis.”
