Tennessee is finding creative ways to address teacher shortages in high-needs fields such as math, science, world languages, and special education.
In 2014, the Tennessee Department of Education passed a policy requiring Educator Preparation Providers (EPPs) to develop partnership agreements with school districts of their choosing. The resulting partnerships enable EPPs and districts to work together to identify needs in hard-to-staff areas. The partnerships also offer flexible pathways to teacher licensure by allowing individuals enrolled in approved EPPs students to be hired as a teacher of record while they complete coursework. The partnerships likewise lead EPPs, such as Milligan University, to collaborate with school districts to identify students with the potential to be hired for positions, and to support job-embedded students as they teach and take classes at the same time.
Since 2014, Elizabethton City Schools and Milligan University have worked together under a formal primary partnership agreement. The partnership is mutually beneficial. According to Assistant Director of Schools for Elizabethton City Schools, Dr. Myra Newman, “Our commitment to hiring the best teachers for our students is realized through the invaluable opportunity provided by job-embedded programs.” The job-embedded experience also allows students who are hired to earn a salary with benefits while completing the job-embedded experience.
Zachary Bickford is one example of a Milligan job-embedded graduate student hired to teach, during the 2023-2024 school year, as an elementary special education teacher for Elizabethton City Schools. Zachary is seeking his Master of Education Degree and K-8 Interventionist license at Milligan. He completed his undergraduate degree in Psychology at Milligan through an academic scholarship and athletic scholarship for soccer. When the soccer season ended his senior year, he was offered a position as a teacher assistant at an elementary school in Elizabethton. He then worked as a coach and teaching assistant at a middle school in a neighboring district. When he returned to Milligan for his graduate studies, he was able to take a new position, job-embedded as an elementary special-ed teacher, with the district, while he is working on his courses.
Throughout his experiences, Zachary has worked in one-on-one, comprehensive development classrooms (CDC), and behavior modification classes. Allison Russel, a special education teacher, with whom Zachary worked, shared, “He does a great job building relationships with students. He understands the importance of using his relationships to foster success in the classroom.”
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