ATLANTA, Ga. — Georgia is getting roughly $10 million in federal money to help people who already work in schools move into classrooms of their own. The Georgia Department of Education says the two grants will widen teacher apprenticeship programs across the state.
The larger award, close to $6 million, is a Teacher Quality Partnership grant. It targets paraprofessionals, the classroom aides who want to become certified teachers, and adds mentoring and support for educators in their first years on the job.
The second grant, about $4.3 million, is aimed at registered apprenticeships for people training to become special education teachers, a field where districts across Georgia routinely struggle to fill openings.
The apprenticeship approach lets candidates draw a salary while they take coursework and log classroom time, so they do not have to quit a job or pile up debt to earn certification. State School Superintendent Richard Woods said in the department release that many of the state’s best future teachers are already in its buildings and know their students and communities.
The University of West Georgia will be the first university partner. It is designing a stronger model that counts what candidates have already learned on the job and adds more mentoring, and the state plans to roll that framework out to other teacher preparation programs and school districts afterward. Technical help will come from the National Center for Grow Your Own, which will work with districts so they can train teachers from their own communities.
The new money builds on an earlier pilot from the department’s rural education and innovation office. That effort, backed by a $3.9 million federal labor grant, supported 195 teaching apprentices over two years.
Both grants fall under Teach in the Peach, the state initiative with the goal of making Georgia the top state in the country for teachers. Its newest piece is a single online listing of teaching openings across Georgia, built with the state’s Professional Standards Commission.
