K-12 Apprenticeship Initiative

K-12 Apprenticeship Initiative:
Diversifying and Expanding the Workforce
While Putting K-12 Student Opportunity and Success First

NCDE’s K12 Apprenticeship initiative is committed to the following design principles:

• Serving schools in low- and moderate income (LMI) communities: Apprentices gain on-the-job training (in educator preparation parlance, “clinical experience”) in schools located in and serving communities experiencing intergenerational poverty.
• Professional Development School (PDS) Partnership: The relationship between the apprenticeship preparation program and the school is based on the 9 Essentials of Professional Development School partnerships, in which the program and school seek to enhance one another’s success through deeply grounding preparation in the realities of a school committed to data-informed continuous improvement of their K12 students’ learning climate, learning opportunities, and learning results.
• School and program improvement focused on improving indicators of student learning climate, opportunities and results of greatest shared concern to the school community. The school community identifies a limited number of improvement priorities so that school improvement is focused, manageable, and educator-owned and -led. Tools for gathering and using DEI analytics, digital personal learning planning, and e-portfolios are essential for making manageable the transition to data-driven decision-making for individual educators at all levels (preservice, inservice and preparation faculty/mentors) and for the entire PDS learning community.
• The program and its school partner agree to foster the deep paradigm shift from conventional to competency-based learning (CBL) practices. We understand it is often the case that successfully assisting future and current K12 educators, teacher educators and mentors to implement CBL practices requires a great deal of collaboration and “unlearning” of prevailing instructional and assessment habits. The surest way to help educators make this daunting transition at scale is to engage the entire PDS partnership community in grappling with the challenges. The partnership should strive to enhance the ability for preparation program faculty, cooperating educators and mentors alike to model for apprentices/candidates CBL practices in online, augmented and hybrid as well as face-to-face learning environments.
• Making the program highly affordable for candidates through “braided” funding — i.e., that taps USDOL apprenticeship funding, district stipends, Pell grants, and other sources — enables candidates to participate in preparation while earning an income and no loss of public benefits, and to complete their program with little to, ideally, no indebtedness.
• Making the program highly affordable contributes significantly to diversifying the pipeline entering the K12 workforce.
• Assessing and addressing the learning climate experienced not only by students but by future and current educators is vital to equitably optimizing learning opportunities and outcomes: we regard it as mission-critical to explore strategies that enhance social capital for LMI students and utilize neurofeedback tools and other methodologies to foster wellness and mindfulness for educators and students alike.
• Systemic Digital Equity: Given the unprecedented challenges and opportunities of growing up as a learner in the digital age — the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT, cyberbullying, device and social network addiction, etc. — it is equally important both that digital divide barriers are removed for all of the partnership’s students and educators and that “personal digital resiliency” is taught and assessed so that equitable access is optimized while the harm of otherwise unfettered access is minimized.
• A NH Registered Educator Apprentice:
  • Works full-time (30 hours per week) with K12 students
  • Earns a salary and benefits while gaining experience as a educator
  • Receives additional funding for tuition, books, supplies and/or childcare
  • Engages with cohort of 10-20 Educator Apprentices for support & encouragement
  • Completes a 2+2 program (AA + BA with Teacher Certification) or Post Baccalaureate Teacher Certification
  • BECOMES A CERTIFIED TEACHER IN 4 YEARS
  • COMPLETES WITH LITTLE OR NO DEBT