BRUNSWICK COUNTY— A partnership that will assist in creating a pipeline of potential teachers into Brunswick County Schools has just gone through final approvals in this week’s finance and HR committee meeting.
Since February, both committee board members have endorsed the district’s partnership with the North Carolina Teaching Fellows Program — an effort that promotes teacher recruitment for the district. Tuesday, the board voted unanimously to start the application process.
The partnership formed in January 2023, when the North Carolina Teaching Fellows Program selected BCS and 19 other North Carolina school districts to receive a $50,000 recruitment grant as a pilot initiative. The grant will be used for the BCS Teaching Fellows scholarship, an offshoot of the state program.
“The intention of our plan is to support and transform outstanding BCS students into outstanding and supported BCS teachers,” Chief Human Resources Officer Natalie Brozy wrote to Port City Daily in a March email.
While students and graduates can apply, so can employees of Brunswick County Schools who are looking to obtain a teaching license. For four years applicants can be awarded scholarships in the amount of $2,500, up to a maximum of $10,000 according to Brozy.
The BCS scholarship can be used at any North Carolina college or university with an educator prep program.
Awardees are required to come back to the school district and teach in any K-12 subject for a minimum of four years. The district hopes to assist a minimum of five applicants.
The NCTF program launched in 1986 as school districts across the nation struggled to recruit and retain teachers. According to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, in the early 1990’s North Carolina needed more than 10,000 new teachers each year due to enrollment growth, class size reduction initiatives, retirements, and high teacher attrition rates.
As of 2021, Brunswick County schools had a 10.61% attrition rate, according to the North Carolina State Board of Education. This is the highest in the Cape Fear region, followed by New Hanover County at 9% and Pender County at 7%. In August of 2023, Brunswick County reported 31 teacher vacancies, with the majority being in math and science.
In Tuesday’s meeting, Brozy stated the program “will not only help us to address our workforce shortage but also to strengthen our local workforce and pipeline.”
As part of the pilot, selected districts were encouraged also to launch middle- and high-school courses that implement professional development. This aligned with BCS’s Teacher Scholar Academy at the Center of Applied Sciences and Technology (COAST), a high school in the district.
Teacher Scholar Academy launched in August 2023 to guide students interested in pursuing a career in education. The courses are labeled “teaching as a profession” and are centered on career and technical education (CTE) where students learn the history of education, the art and science of teaching, and engage in field experience.
The program starts as early as seventh grade and helps students assess their interest and start early advising for high-school class registration. In 10th grade students are eligible to enroll in the Teacher Scholar Academy at COAST. Completion mimics 120-hours of field placement in a classroom and students can receive college credits at select colleges and universities. However, participation is not a requirement for students to apply for the BCSTF scholarship.
COAST teacher Jennie Bryan is the first and only teacher guiding courses at the high school as of now. She indicated at a February finance and HR committee meeting that she hopes her current students are among recipients of the scholarship.
At the time Superintendent Dale Cole mentioned how he was able to observe Bryan’s “teaching as a profession” classes. He noted over half of the participants are from a minority background.
“So I think by cultivating that interest early on in middle and high school, we are getting a much diverse pool that we are pulling from,” Cole said at the meeting.
Although minority participation isn’t an explicit goal of the BCTF scholarship, Bryan said that it is “in no doubt powerful.”
“My students of color have said one reason they want to teach is so there will be more teachers in classrooms who look like them in the future because they believe that would have been really powerful for them in their school experiences,” Bryan said.
Brunswick County schools has 12,640 students with 40% a part of minority groups. Hispanic and Latino descent make up around 16%, while Black or African American are around 14%.
The application is set to open in the spring of 2024.
[Ed. note: This has been updated to reflect the Teacher Scholar Academy launched in August 2023.]
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