Tackling Teacher Shortages With Alternate Route Programs

Erin Stanley: So James, can we start with you? Could you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background?

James Falco: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having us, Erin. My name is James Falco. I am a middle school assistant principal by day and a proud part-time director of the Alternate Route Teacher Training Program at Monmouth University. By night, I like to say by weekend, but I assume this role about a year and a half ago now and in that time have learned a great deal about alternate route teacher prep. I had been a part of the program for almost the decade prior as an instructor, as an enrollment manager, and again, was lucky enough to take over. So I’m very excited to talk to everyone today about some of my insights and to learn from Alexis as well in New Mexico. We are over here in New Jersey. Monmouth University, if you’re not familiar, is located pretty close to Long Branch New Jersey. You can see my background, the beach, it’s going to be about 80 degrees here tomorrow. I’m sure that’s still not as nice as it is out in California, New Mexico, Utah right now, Utah might be pretty cold. I’m not quite. It’s a little cold. Pleasure to be here again. Excited to talk to everyone and I’ll pass it over to Alexis.

Alexis Esslinger: Good afternoon. Thanks, James. Hello, Erin. My name is Alexis Esslinger and I am with a group called CES LEAP in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and we’re an alternative program that spans the whole state of New Mexico. As far as my background, I got into kind of similar to James by night adjuncting for a college up in the north part of New Mexico when I was an administrator at a college, a high school. And then I started working more closely with the institution and then eventually became a director of a teacher education program, which did the alternative as well as traditional paths. And then two years ago I made the leap into LEAP in Albuquerque because this is only alternative. So it doesn’t have any of the traditional prep around the BA or the AA or MA programs. It’s just one year alternative license. So I’ve been doing it for about 11 years now overall in some way, shape or form.

Erin Stanley: Wow, I am so excited to talk to you guys today because of your wealth of experience and the variety of experience. The teacher shortage, as we all know, has been in the news for years. Every state’s kind of dealing with it slightly differently. I think there are a lot of different approaches, but I’m curious how many of our attendees out there are involved in some kind of alternate route or non-traditional teacher preparation program. So you’re going to see a poll pop up and go ahead and answer that question. Maybe you are like these two, an instructor previously or a mentor or a coach, whatever, if you’re involved in any way in an alternate route program. So it looks like it’s a pretty even split between yes and no. 40%. 40%. And then the rest of you not yet, but will be soon. So that’s great. I’m glad you’re here today. I think you’re going to get a lot of great tips. So I want to just dive into the specifics of each of your programs. Alexis, tell us about the challenges you’re seeing in New Mexico, why the LEAP program was formed to deal with those challenges specifically.

Alexis Esslinger: Sure, Erin, the LEAP program is six years old. This year started in 2018 after a planning year. And because in New Mexico, a lot of areas in the region and nationally, we struggle to keep teachers in classrooms and to recruit them at the beginning of the year. So we saw a lot of districts and schools, even diocesan independent schools start the year without enough teachers and start the year with long-term subs. So this is a move to support that. It comes from a procurement group here in Albuquerque called CES, and it’s a PD offering as a result. So I have about 14 instructional coaches who go out to classrooms and support the teachers over the course of the year. And then another reason I think for its conception is because in 2017 18, during that planning year, the state only had IHE programs. So it was only colleges, universities, some online programs from around in the region or in the southwest. And we didn’t have anything that was different to offer an alternative. Each one of those colleges and universities of course offers the alternative program. And at that time, I was offering it at one of the colleges and it would take candidates two to five years to get through our program. And when LEAP was born, it was created to happen in one year. So everything becomes compact, everything becomes much more intense to get through the preparation in one year.

Erin Stanley: Yeah, six years. Wow. And you’ve trained 915 teachers

Alexis Esslinger: In the six years. 900 have gone through and completed.

Erin Stanley: Wow. So what is the process for them? One year is not much time.

Alexis Esslinger: And so that’s an interesting thing that we’ve kind of had to find a good balance for because it’s really 11 months. We bring ’em in, our application opens in an April and goes through July, and then we do an induction for three and a half days in July, three days. And then they start their program and they’re done the next June. So kind of coinciding with the school year, we build our seat time and our academic hours and our theory around eight hours of PD a month and then two hours of methods preparation virtually a month in three different areas around the state. So we really make it a very tight ship. We don’t have a lot of space for absences and missing a week or more. Sometimes I sort of say tongue in cheek seized get degrees, but not in leap because we expect them to be there every single time and we expect them to be on camera on participating. They have to maintain an 85% standard in program to stay in program, and that’s kind of how they go through the year. And then I have to talk a little bit about sort of a symbiotic way that it was conceived as well. Our executive director was a superintendent himself, a principal, a coach, really an institution of leaders here in New Mexico. And he has a board that is comprised of all the superintendents, many of the superintendents around the state, and they form the executive board of this collaborative. And so they would be the first to say, we need teachers, I need 10 teachers, I need two teachers, I need six teachers. And so oftentimes they come to me through that and they say, I need space for 10 candidates and my district will pay for them to come through your program if you will hold a spot for them. And so that’s kind of how we recruit and retain into the program. And then, yeah, so there’s the symbiotic nature of it with all those superintendents working together in a network. And then there’s also on the other side of it is it’s the fastest program in the state and it’s the most in-person. And then with an instructional coach, a lot of the institutions, they don’t necessarily do that in-person coaching like we do every month virtually using Gore React or in-person where we go and visit their classroom. So we’re just finishing a Gore React month, and then we’re jumping into another in-person visit in November.

Erin Stanley: So these teachers, students, are they in the classroom during that year?

Alexis Esslinger: Full-time, teacher of record, not a residency or apprenticeship. It’s just all the way in.

Erin Stanley: Wow. Well, I know that the students that have gone through your program talk glowingly about the kind of support that they receive and the kind of networks that they build to continue supporting each other throughout. Talk to me about that support system. Was that intentional?

Alexis Esslinger: It is intentional because I think one of the key areas is we bring career educators in to do the coaching. So in some ways I don’t intervene or get involved in that. It’s coaching without, there’s nothing punitive or supervisory about it. It’s just truly helping the candidates survive this year. Sometimes administrators want to catch us and chat and that kind of thing, and to an extent that’s fine, but to an extent we’re really a coach for that first-year teacher coming from Bank of America or I’m sure like James sees from every public sector and now finding themselves in a classroom where they might’ve thought it’s teaching. I did this for all these years and then I got multiple degrees and they’re shortly overwhelmed.

Erin Stanley: James, are you seeing similar challenges in New Jersey?

James Falco: Absolutely. As our program has expanded, and Alexis touched on this a little bit, we’ve encountered some of the same challenges. Our program enrollment-wise has exploded over the last two years, and I think that a large part of that is because we’ve been intentional with how we’re recruiting candidates from all over the state. Part of that is because we have tried to become more convenient in terms of putting our entire program online. With that comes challenges as well in terms of the level of rigor perhaps and the experience that our candidates are getting. Whereas a few years ago prior to the pandemic, we had a very similar model to Alexis. Our students attended classes on Saturdays for several hours, and then we also had web modules that they would complete asynchronously to accrue the hours that are required for candidates in New Jersey. So in New Jersey, it’s a two-year process, a total of 350 hours and an additional 50 hours comes prior to those individuals getting hired in a school district. So they consider that the pre-service component, and there’s an observation component that comes with that too. So within 50 short hours, traditionally, we expose them to best practices in teaching and learning, attempt to help them with the interview process, which they would be encountering pretty soon, or we’re in the midst of that already, and then had coordinated so that they could get into a school and see some of what we were talking about a lot of times for the first time since they were students themselves. So there was a challenge in that. And then once we went virtual, that component became even a little bit more challenging. Now we were, of course, communicating with them, connecting with them virtually, which could be a whole nother webinar in and of itself. But I think a lot of the challenge for us over the last four years has revolved around that expansion. How are we supporting our candidates and still providing personalized attention? We really do consider ourselves an intensive support network because we have candidates all over the state, and the support that they’re receiving individually from their own respective districts is very inconsistent. And some of our candidates, without the support that Alexis was talking about with a collective with a board of directors, many of our candidates are being hired in high-needs districts and the support that they can offer a lot of times can be inconsistent. So what we have built out is a support network, as you mentioned before, that we really feel like helps our candidates and supports our candidates if and when they need it. We make ourselves readily available. So outside of the scope of our online classes and of course our modules and things that we hold, regular office hours, and of course, are here to support them in a mentoring capacity as often as needed.

Erin Stanley: Wow, I love that both of you have to align with state standards for teachers of course, but these standards were obviously developed for much more traditional teaching programs. Have you found it difficult to incorporate those standards into your programs? James, why don’t you go first?

James Falco: No, that’s a great question. And I think what we have done several times now over the last couple of years as we transitioned, as I mentioned before, through the pandemic, as we transitioned through the use of the edTPA A here in New Jersey, when that became a mandate in New Jersey, our curriculum changed of course to support that from the very beginning. And one of the challenges that I didn’t mention of course in the prior question was attempting to prepare our candidates in a very short period of time for a performance measure of that intensity. So our entire curriculum really, we built out supports for that early and often. And a lot of times it was overwhelming for our alternate route candidates who were again in the classroom experiencing trial by fire really from day one. That was something that of course required a change to our curriculum. Since that has been waived, we have of course revised our curriculum twice now and we’ll be continuing to do that on a regular basis just because we, of course, in the short time that we have with our candidates, want not only our professional standards to be the foundation of what we do, but we also utilize the INTA standards for accreditation and they closely complement our professional standards as well. Those two have become the foundation of what we do in recent years, and because of that, it’s definitely a lot easier to incorporate them, to prioritize them.

Alexis Esslinger: I would echo a little bit of what James said there, and a lot of that sounds very similar. Our neighbors in Colorado use the edTPA A. In New Mexico after about what I’ve heard is 20 years of efforts around working to dispel perhaps a myth that the Praxis core evaluates teachers’ readiness effectively. We’ve released those last year was the first year, and instead candidates the program through a portfolio. So they do a readiness portfolio and that replaces their Praxis math, reading, and writing. This is only the second year of that transition. I sometimes talk to our state department and say “Pilot,” and they say “transition.” And so I have faith that we’ll stay in that process each year. We revitalize that portfolio and make sure that it’s strong, make sure it captures the readiness of this first year. And like James shared, we crosswalk it to the INTA standards and then we crosswalk it. I’d like us to crosswalk it to the justice standards as well, but we’re not quite there yet. And then I think we certainly use our state standards as well, and that is comprehensive throughout the state of New Mexico at the colleges and universities as well for most programs.

Erin Stanley: It’s a lot. It’s a lot to juggle and make sure your students are doing within a short time. I think that’s amazing. And a portfolio system sounds really great. Then students really have that evidence even for themselves—what they know, what they can do, what they’ve learned. Tell me what the makeup of the students are that are becoming teachers. Do they come to you with a degree? Give me a picture of what these kinds of students look like.

James Falco: Yeah, I can just chime in quick and I’m sure Alexis can add to this, but we have a myriad of candidates from all walks of life and some I strongly believe have always felt as though education was their passion and perhaps went a different route. So many of them come to us. Having said that, they feel as though they would have much preferred to join education earlier. Others are career changers for a number of different reasons. Some have taken the charge of getting into education as a second career. Some are looking to perhaps get on a little bit different schedule, change their livelihood. But we have a myriad from all over the state, again, from all walks of life. Many come to us in New Jersey. There are criteria in order to get a CE, and I know Alexis touched on this just a minute ago, but they have to have passed, well up until January, they have to have passed the Praxis core, passed the Praxis two exam in their content area. They have to have attended an undergrad program and achieved a certain GPA, and they have to have certain subject matter preparation, so they have to have taken certain courses in their respective area. Recently the state passed or started a pilot for a limited CE program, which allows candidates to waive one of those components. And that’s been really popular as well because we have individuals here in New Jersey who perhaps didn’t go to school for something that they have become passionate about that perhaps throughout their time before teaching. And the limited CE program to a degree allows them to become certified in that area. So for instance, we can have somebody who has a background in science but has really become passionate about physical education and health, and they can pursue that and become a teacher within a relatively short period of time with that limited CE program.

Erin Stanley: Wow. Alexis, how about your students?

Alexis Esslinger: Sure, Erin, I can just jump on. We offer the program in five pathways: so elementary, secondary, and special education. And then we offer dual licensure if they want to do both at a time, so they can do elementary and special education or secondary and special education. And our numbers are about 10% are just special ed, 49% secondary, 31% elementary, dual elementary is about 18 and dual secondary looks like it’s 16. And then I’ll just give you some interesting data here because it always fascinates me to distill it down to this age 19 to 24, we have 32 of our candidates out of 180, age 25 to 29, 53, age 30 to 39, 48 of them, age 40 to 49, 34 of them, age 50 to 59, 19, and then age 60 or older, nine, and then one, no response. So it’s interesting the way, but I would say similar to James, they come from all walks of life in New Mexico. I think we have a rural tendency here to have candidates come to us because they finished college and they move home and their hometown high school wants a coach, wants a teacher, wants a history person, and that’s what they got their BA in. So they join our program, spend the year, and can stay in their hometown for a few more years or one more year. Sometimes it turns into a career of coaching and that sort of thing. We’re only six, of course, so we can’t really talk about that longitudinal data, but that’s what we know so far.

Erin Stanley: Wow, that’s fascinating. That is a huge age range and probably a huge variety of experiences. How are you measuring the success and impact of your alternate route programs on teacher retention and student outcomes?

James Falco: I think something I’ve started to pay close attention to over the last couple of years as enrollment manager and now director were a couple different things in terms of how we engage our candidates, how many of them are coming to us with limited information about the process, how many of them are coming to us already interested in our program, what is our conversion rate for those people that we made contact with, and we’re fortunate enough that they ended up enrolling with us? So things like that, that data with regard to recruitment is something I pay close attention to. And of course, the personalized nature, the connection that we make with those individuals, and how we go about communicating to them, what makes our program special, what makes it unique. And then once they’re with us, of course, and I was mentioning this to Erin before, looking closely at how many of our students or our candidates stay with their respective districts once they’re hired, how many of them continue on to get tenure here in New Jersey? Those are all things that I have started to collect because again, I’m interested in knowing the effectiveness of our program and always looking at what we can do to improve. So we spend a lot of time speaking with our candidates throughout the program and afterward, alumni engagement is something that’s important to us. And one of the things Alexis mentioned that piqued my interest is we’re looking to put together a collective of individuals… forgive me, I can’t think of the name that I’m thinking. Almost like a…

Alexis Esslinger: A coalition.

James Falco: A coalition. I like that. But the name that I have for it, again, I can’t think of it, but I’ll think of it of course at some point, but a collective, as we’ll talk, a coalition of individuals, of alumni who are interested in moving our program forward and supporting others who are going to experience the same that they did in their first two, in their first four years and beyond that.

Erin Stanley: Yeah, so smart, especially because they’ve been through that experience, they can offer support in a way that others may not be able to.

Alexis Esslinger: Erin, I would say that in terms of assessment, we do the portfolio. We do monthly assignments anywhere from four to eight that their coaches grade; they have to hit that 85 program standard or they have to resubmit. We do release sometimes, like last year we released nine overall. We put it in all our documents that say, if you’re unfit to teach or if you’re unwilling to meet the requirements of our PD or expectation around academics, then we will let you move on. There’s other programs where you could go once a week for the next four years. And so we try to do that as far as our, what keeps them coming back to LEAP every year? It is interesting because we don’t do a lot of recruiting. We go to an HR conference, we go to a charter schools conference and present program to them. And so we have one district in our state and they send a core group of teachers every year through our program to add special education licensure onto their already existing licenses to then go back and be leaders in their district for special ed. And that’s a creative path that I think every district everywhere could probably take advantage of with cert in their states. And then we just had Albuquerque public schools talk to us a little bit about that too. And at first they said, we want 148 spots next year for one SPED person at every site to add the licensure on, and we will entrust them to start leading the SPED group at the school. That changed to 20, which was a great relief to me. But I see the potential in that sort of adding a licensure on with a cohort group and a network of support and career educators in the field. And so in that way, I think we sort of have a little bit of latitude there because we are the only one that’s not associated with a college or institution. So we don’t charge for parking, we don’t charge for student fees, we don’t have nutrition, healthcare costs. So I think that’s a benefit for us because it makes the candidates know it’s simple. We’re also a bit cheaper than everyone else because coming from this collaborative as a PD give back to the state. So our program for the whole year is about $3,400. I’d say 35, including some travel if they do choose to travel, but 3000 for tuition books, some associated travel on top of that, or PD attendance if they want to. But it’s much more economical than other programs and the community colleges, of course, around the same budget, but you couldn’t go to an institution and get the same outcome at the same price point or anything near it currently.

Erin Stanley: Yeah, that’s pretty remarkable. I want to ask you all now just a few questions about GoReact specifically, but let’s ask our audience first. How many of you use GoReact in your programs? Okay, so we have about 57% of our audience is not using GoReact and 43% is. So when thinking about the goals of your program and the challenges, what made you decide to use GoReact?

Alexis Esslinger: I’ll start, Erin. I was at a Deans for Impact gathering in Chicago this summer, and we were all walking down the street from, I think it’s St. Louis University, to where we were having dinner, and I was walking with a few of the other deans, and one of them said, we love GoReact. Our candidates can jump on, or their teachers, I guess is what she said. Our teachers can jump on, they can watch their feedback, they can jump in, and it eliminates that go to the classrooms. And she, if I recall correctly, was from Seattle and it might be the University of Washington. And she said it’s difficult with all their traffic and all their sort of urban sprawl to get to a school on time and not challenge anyone too much. And she said, GoReact is a super supplement to them in their program. And I was like, what is GoReact? And then we were at ACTE last year in January, and it was everywhere, advertised everywhere. So my coaches and I were like, I wonder what that is? How could we use that? So it was both Deans for Impact and ACTE that helped me see that I know practitioners in the field who are using it, and I want to do what I can do to help my coaches not have to travel five hours away to observe if we can capture it in their classroom and turn around the feedback really quickly. And we’re only a couple of months in, so maybe James has more experience with the true depth over time, but we just started it this month and when I polled all of my coaches, I said, what is the single most important assignment this month for our teachers? And they said, the GoReact lesson plan. And I was like, yay. So James?

James Falco: Absolutely. No, I would echo that. And we have been utilizing GoReact thankfully for the last two years. When I took over, it was something we put in place immediately, and admittedly, so the first semester, I think it was something we were learning, we’re continuing to learn about it, excited to continue expanding upon it. But with our second-year alternate route candidates who are going through what we refer to, excuse me, something in my eye as our phase three and four candidates. So they’re in their second year, they have one year under their belt, they’ve worked with a mentor, they begin to use GoReact. And as Alexis said, as we expanded virtually and we now have candidates from our northernmost and southernmost parts of the state, GoReact allows us the opportunity to get into those classrooms and provide intentional coaching. We start out by utilizing some shorter, less complex assignments that revolve around candidates using a singular high leverage teaching practice or reflecting on one of a number of different things, perhaps some critical dispositions from our professional standards topics that we’re discussing at that time in their experience. And then we move on to, as Alexis said, some larger performance measures where candidates are required to design a lesson or learning segment, which is eventually their ultimate a performance measure that has taken the place of edTPA, but they do a singular lesson and then a learning segment. They engage in collaboration with their peers leading up to that. And then for those two larger assignments, I work with other instructors and we triangulate feedback for them. They also complete a self-assessment and have an opportunity to do the same in the same way a teacher candidate would in a traditional program. But I know Alexis mentioned instructional coaches before. That piqued my interest as well. I would love to have specific individuals to perhaps assist us with that in the future as we expand.

Erin Stanley: I love the scaffolding you’re describing that there’s some very specific things they look for in the beginning and it kind of gets larger and larger, and that’s so easy to do in GoReact. So that’s such a great use of it. And if any of you have driven through New Mexico, you can drive for a long time and not see a single person. So I imagine how the rural piece that you talked about before is a real challenge and being able to have video, not having to have instructional coaches go to every school is pretty huge.

Alexis Esslinger: Yeah, we actually fly one of our coaches from Albuquerque down to Carlsbad. She rents a car and drives down to J Lovington area, Hobbes, New Mexico, which is right down there on the Mexico-Texas border. And just yesterday she has this issue. She’s going down for a week, so she’ll spend four nights down there and see candidates each day. She has about 14, and then she’ll set up a portfolio workshop with ’em and things like that. But one guy, he’s out of the country during that week, and so she was like, “What am I going to do? I don’t want to have to fly all the way back down to Hobbes. What am I going to do?” And I said, “GoReact.” He can easily record himself the week before and after and make that up, and then you don’t make a solo trip. And it was like everything kind of linked together for us.

Erin Stanley: I love that. Well, I mean, I could ask questions forever, but I want to make sure our audience has a minute to ask a question. So if anybody has questions for our panelists, please put ’em in the Q&A box. And while we’re waiting for those, I’m going to keep asking questions. I want to know, how do you anticipate GoReact improving your communication and the support for your programs?

Alexis Esslinger: So in Deans for Impact, I’m a fellow this year. We do a theory of change, and we look at how change actually happens with this level of instructor—so our coaches. And I want it to be really the flow-through from the beginning of the program to the end that connects coaches to candidates. So regardless of which way the winds blow in at a site or in district or in our program, that’s the thing that we can always rely on outside of any variable. So just two weeks ago we had—I don’t know if you guys were, or if maybe you’ve seen this—but in Roswell, they had a hundred-year flood. It doesn’t rain very much in Roswell, and it did rain so much so that they were out of school for a whole week and kids displaced from their families in Roswell, New Mexico, and my coach who lives there was like, it said 30% chance of rain. So their whole world is upside down. They’re finally back in school. They were back in school yesterday. And it’s devastating, right? It’s really difficult for the whole area. But that’s one thing we can do. We can pause the program for them and catch up as time happens with them virtually so that everything doesn’t pause for that coach and the other candidates. And then we moved all of their training that happened last Saturday to a virtual space so that if they could attend, they could, but many of them were helping family move kids going home to mud floors due to those floods in Roswell, where it never rains. Wow.

James Falco: Absolutely. So as we have received nothing but wonderful praise for our use of this, and I can tell you two quick things. One is that there is some reluctance, and we saw this with the edTPA as well. Anytime video coaching is being used in a classroom, from time to time, we receive it now. And whether it’s a building-level administrator or a district as a whole that’s reluctant to allow something like that. So we have of course found ways to talk through that and to communicate, obviously its benefits at this point, but through the use of it, there has never been a situation where somebody has not come back to us and said, “Wow, this has really been effective. I really enjoy this. I can’t wait to bring this and share this with my building-level administration with individuals.” Beyond that, we’ve had several candidates who have gone and perhaps are communicating that they’d like to expand upon the use of this down the road. So my hope is that this will continue to spur that. But I mentioned before that we’ve traditionally, or within the last two years, used GoReact solely in the second year, and we’re looking to expand that into our first year. And something we were talking about recently was engaging the mentors, the district mentors more in this process. So perhaps encouraging mentors and candidates to use GoReact for more specific and intentional coaching throughout their first year, which of course can be is obviously challenging to say the least. If we can provide more intensive coaching there and support there and utilize this in the first year, we think that just the sky is the limit. So we’re excited to continue developing that and hopefully start to encourage this, its use in the first year starting next September.

Erin Stanley: It really is such a complicated communication between the school that these student teachers are at, them, and then also the ALT Cert program, and making sure that communication happens. I mean, that is really nice. I know there’s a program in North Carolina where they all can log on to the same GoReact assignment and look at what the principal thinks versus what the instructional coach thinks versus what the student thinks in their own self-reflection. So it’s such a great way to bring all that communication together because that can get really, really tricky, I bet, coordinating that. We do have a question from the audience about your program, James: how to enroll. What does enrollment look like in your program?

James Falco: Absolutely. So in New Jersey, if somebody is interested in enrolling in the 50-hour pre-service course, it’s a simple application process. They’re enrolled in that program again prior to being hired in a full-time district. So a lot of what we talk about again is based in best practices in teaching and learning, observations of that, the interview process, resume building, things of that nature. So they would be enrolled in that part of the program. And then one thing we do uniquely is some programs combine the two, the 50 and the 350-hour program. And one of the things we made the choice to do when I took over was to separate those programs because there are a lot of opportunities. If individuals enjoy our approach, appreciate our approach, find that our program is beneficial, we want them to sign on for our 350-hour program after that. So we’ve separated the two again, so there’s two registrations for the 50-hour and the 350-hour program once they’re hired.

Erin Stanley: Amazing. Thank you. Thank you both so much for being with me and with our audience today and sharing about your Alt Cert programs. I have two relatives who recently went through Alt Cert programs, both are in their fifties, one in Massachusetts, one in Arizona. And I just think their students are so lucky because they come with such incredible experience, skills, and knowledge to tap into that and utilize that. I think it’s, I’m so glad that these programs are really expanding. So just final thoughts, what is some advice you would give to anyone thinking about starting an ALT Cert program from your role, not as a student, but if they’re in a district or at an institution and they really see a need for this ALT Cert program, what would you suggest they do?

Alexis Esslinger: Yeah, I mean, I would suggest that there’s lots of different on-ramps for teachers to get in the field, and then we need support, and then we need mentorship and all the things we know are the tools that keep them there, but flexibility. And so we open ours in April and we close it in July, and then we open it again for a month and a half called Late Hire. And that’s when someone at a school had to suddenly move to Texas and they had a position and they brought in someone from the community and they need a program. Our state gives 30 days after contracting to be enrolled in a program and provide evidence of that. So we give them a letter of acceptance. And then I think on the other end of that, our state is very generous in the sense that they allow, on the alternative license, they allow two years and then a third appeal year. So if you didn’t finish your program in the first two years, you can appeal, your district can write the letter on your behalf and ask for the third year. And so it’s all of those things that work to help teachers get access to the field.

James Falco: It’s interesting, some very similar processes in place in New Jersey, but in terms of advice—and I wrote down a few notes earlier, thinking back to where we started—we started very small and we started with strategic partnerships like Alexis had mentioned many years ago now, 10, 15 years ago when the program looked very different. It was actually 24 hours, so not 50, 24 for the pre-service component, and then it was 200 hours over two years. And what that equated to obviously looked very different, but that was as little as seven years ago in New Jersey. So we started small, we had strategic partnerships with local school districts, high-needs districts, and started to recruit very differently back then, but to do so in a way, we were really particular with who we were looking for and promoted jobs, obviously opened up our community to those who were interested. And then shared job openings and things of that nature became very close with a few districts, and that helped to really springboard our program. Many of those districts we’re still very close with and have those relationships, like Alexis mentioned, where districts are—I could tell you this as a building level administrator in January, when there’s a need and you’re able to help fill that, it really is a wonderful thing because it’s very difficult to find teachers, I think anywhere right now, at any given time, but at certain points in the year and for very certain positions, it can be almost impossible. So I think Alexis and I have a unique opportunity to help fill some of those roles. And when we can do that, it helps to obviously bridge those gaps and build those strategic and help to build on that for years to come. So starting small, building those relationships with local school districts, I think is the right way to go.

Erin Stanley: Thank you. Thanks so much, everyone. Thanks for being here. Good luck to you, James and Alexis, as you continue to just have incredibly successful programs and continue to grow them.

Alexis Esslinger: Thank you, Erin. Thanks, James.