Pathway 2 Teach Information Session Recording Transcript

00:01–00:47
Renee: My name is Renee Brown and I am the Apprentice Coordinator, and I'm joined today with Dr. Lisa Testa, the Interim Director of Teacher Preparation and the Offices of Clinical Experiences. Today we're super excited to share with you details about the Pathway 2 Teach, which is Kent State's registered apprenticeship designed specifically to support districts and help in growing their own special education teachers. So we'll keep questions till the end, and I will be documenting all the questions so that if we don't have an answer for you now, we will be able to get back with you and share those answers with you. We're also going to record the session, and we will send this recording to you at the end of the session. Thank you again. 

00:48–01:30
Lisa: Thank you, Renee, I appreciate that. Again, we welcome you and thank you for taking some time to hop on this call. I'll go quickly through the overview, which is about a 30,000-foot view of the apprenticeship. We'll describe the different parts that are included, and then we'll have some time at the end to answer your questions. So the different parts that we'll be explaining are the program components, what's expected prior to the apprenticeship phase or pre-apprenticeship phase, aspects of eligibility, and then we'll go into briefly the employer's responsibility.

01:31–02:22
The employer would be the ESC or the school district. And then we'll talk a bit about potential apprentices and our desire to partner with you in promoting the apprenticeship to your paraprofessionals. We'll share a timeline of recruitment for this coming fall semester, and then we'll give you the dates of the future apprentice-oriented info sessions. Today's presentation is geared toward employers, but we are also looking to host all the Thursdays of February apprentice-oriented presentations as well. So Pathway 2 Teach is the name of our apprenticeship, and the '2' is meant to be not just shorthand for the word 'to', but it really is to emphasize that an apprenticeship is a two-year program. 

02:23–02:53 
And so the apprenticeship itself is something that is required when you're a registered apprenticeship. So I'll explain some of those components here in a bit. But really, this is a pathway for paraprofessionals to earn a bachelor's degree. And in our case, this first group will be limited to just our preschool through fifth-grade intervention specialist licensure. That's our first program to get on board with the apprenticeship program.

02:54–03:27
Apprentices, as you know or may not know, are participants that are paid. So they would still remain employed full or part-time, but they would- what's different about apprenticeships than a traditional pathway is that they are able to be credited for work that they're doing on the job, learning that they're doing on the job. They'll still be required instruction, coursework that they take that aligns to the licensure requirements. And then they will also be able to earn credit through prior learning assessments. So I'll explain a little bit more about that.

03:28–04:20
But really what this is designed to is to address needs that many in this Zoom room, in this Teams room, have expressed to us in being short-staffed in special education. So we wanted to provide an answer for that staffing need. We also hope that as this expands, particularly into high schools and pre-apprenticeships, this will create a sustainable pipeline to teacher licensure. And then we know that there are a whole host of really wonderful, committed paraprofessionals already serving in your schools. And so this is a chance for us to upskill them and credential them and allow them to stay if they so choose and if you choose to keep them employed as teachers once they're finished with the apprenticeship program. 

04:21–04:52
So I'm going to just back up just a little bit because I'm using a lot of the language, the vernacular of workforce development. So apprenticeships have been something that's been long in the field of workforce development, particularly in the trades. But education is new to this whole other realm of workforce development. It's really only been a couple of years in the state of Ohio that we've been able to offer registered apprenticeships. And so I need to explain what it means and what you're looking for with a registered apprenticeship.

04:53–05:37
So across all sectors of employment, this definition holds that it's industry-driven. So in our case, the sector is education. It's a high-quality career pathway where employers can develop and prepare future workforce and individuals can obtain paid work experience and receive progressive wage increases, classroom instruction, and a portable nationally recognized credential. So in this case, the portable national recognized credential will be a bachelor of science degree in education that leads to licensure as an intervention specialist. So some of these outcomes I think we've already touched on.

05:38–06:13
The reason why this is important is it allows us to work with you, our district partners, our ESC partners, to develop current paraprofessionals to become credential teachers because we know there's a teacher shortage. And this is one way that we can work towards addressing that. For the paraprofessional, many want to become credential teachers. And this is a way that they can do it without leaving full-time employment. And then for Kent State, we have a commitment as a public institution to respond to our district partners and respond to our communities.

06:14–07:02
And so we see this as part of our mission. And then we also appreciate the opportunity for individuals who want to make a career change for it to be a little less difficult because they can move from their experience as a paraprofessional into the teaching—into a teaching role instead. So we both have—we all three have the same shared desired outcome, comprehensively prepared, fully credentialed preschool through grade 5 intervention specialists. So this is an integrated and supported pathway. And some of that is required by the registered apprenticeship, what that means, and it has components that are required, but then it's also required from our accreditation body.

07:03–07:38
So we are a teacher education program that's accredited by CAPE. And so you'll see that both are woven into this apprenticeship. So the university coursework towards licensure aligns to the required courses that our licensing body needs us to offer. So the coursework is part of the apprenticeship, and in the language of an apprenticeship, that whole system, they call it required instruction, or RI. Supervised on-the-job training is a requirement of an apprenticeship.

07:39–08:28 
And so for this particular apprenticeship, it will be 2,000 hours. So once they are approved to become apprentices, the clock starts, and they have two years to clock 2,000 hours of supervised on-the-job training. They're evaluated for those 200 hours, excuse me, 2,000 hours through a work process schedule. And that's a sophisticated rubric that breaks down behaviors and skills that the apprentice is gaining as they're maturing in their ability to move from a paraprofessional to an intervention specialist. And so it's concrete, it's observable, it's something that our faculty have worked really hard to develop, and I'm really excited for this group of teacher candidates to be able to experience it.

08:29–09:15
Because I think it's going to add a lot of clarity for the mentors and the teacher candidates or the apprentices to understand what they need to do to move from supporting students as a paraprofessional into leading a classroom, leading students, leading paraprofessionals as an intervention specialist. So I think that will be a strength of this program. District-based mentorship is an important part of the support systems. So one of the things that we're asking employers to commit to is to, not unlike what we ask of you when you're taking our traditional teacher candidates, we need mentors. And so the mentors in this case will have a little more expected of them because they will be making a two-year commitment where they stay with the apprentice for the entirety of their apprenticeship.

09:16–09:48
And then the last component of this is continuous collaboration. And so we are inviting you to consider partnering with us in a slightly different way. Many of you partner with us already, hosting our students for field experiences and student teaching. This would be another pathway of support that we're asking for, but we're also eager to provide because it will be a new way that we can partner that will be mutually beneficial. So let's look at candidate eligibility.

09:49–10:25
Because this is an apprenticeship, it's a little different. And because there's licensure requirements, there are layers. So all the potential candidates have to be employed as K-12 paraprofessionals. Now, if for some reason they're a sixth or twelfth grade paraprofessional, we still can, they're still eligible for this program. We would have some coordination we need to do to make sure that they can obtain the 2,000 hours in a P-5 setting, working with a mentor who is also an intervention specialist in the P-5 setting.

10:26–10:42
So that's going to be an important component. I see a question. I will address that question at the end. They will have to be admitted to Kent State. So one of our requirements is a GPA requirement for advanced standing.

10:43–11:20
So our students, traditional pathway students, will go for two years or the equivalent to complete their prerequisites and their Kent core, their liberal arts requirements. At the end of that period of time, the second semester of their sophomore year, they apply for advanced study. The apprenticeship pathway will be similar. They will have the roughly 60 credit hours of prior coursework that they need to complete before they're eligible to apply for the apprenticeship. And during that time, there is a GPA requirement that they must meet of a 2.75.

11:21–11:41
Admission to Kent State, the criteria is a little lighter in general. So I don't think, you know, we need to worry as much about that. But there is that step. Once they're looking for the actual apprenticeship admission to that, they do need to have a 2.75 GPA. The district or the ESC is required to sign a document supporting these folks.

11:42–12:07
And so in the language of a registered apprenticeship, it's called an employer agreement, acceptance agreement. And, you know, the big part of that is that you're saying you'll provide a mentor. It's not unlike what we ask of you for our other types of placements. But it is a two-year commitment. So, you know, we understand that it's difficult to always project if you can hire someone for two years.

12:08–12:55
So there will be some allowances there for reduction in force or for termination of an employee based on performance. But in most cases, we think it's doable that the ESC or the district can make a two-year commitment to allow this person to complete the apprenticeship at your site. So the employee responsibility, this is the district and the mentor, is to support the apprentice's participation. So that's serving as a kind of a conduit between Kent State and the student, the apprentice. And then to provide the on-the-job learning opportunities, that's 2,000 hours, as we mentioned, to identify qualified mentor teachers and then to collaborate with us.

12:56–13:29
The role of the mentor teacher in the language of a registered apprenticeship, they're called a journey worker. So you might have heard that before when you're, you know, talking about the trades. Same idea. But the mentor teacher is doing the same kinds of work they've done as a cooperating teacher for our student teachers. So providing instructional guidance and coaching, collaborating with Kent State on the apprentice's progress and then supporting skill development aligned to the licensure competencies and then playing a critical role in retention and professional growth.

13:30–13:56
So a lot of that, I think, are things that many of your folks already do as cooperating teachers. So you might just be applying that to a different program, this apprenticeship program. So year one is, we're calling it a pre-apprenticeship, really just means the coursework prior to eligibility to the apprenticeship. And so they would have to take some coursework. They are allowed to provide a portfolio.

13:57–14:30
So in Ohio, we have a new system called Fast Path. It's a portfolio system where they could actually upload evidence of learning that meets the learning objectives and then our faculty evaluate it. So it's a time and money saver. It allows us to recognize that some of our courses, the learning objectives could have already been met by work that they've done as paraprofessionals. So among the foundational coursework, about 18 to 20 hours, depending on the individual, could be met by prior learning assessments.

14:31–15:07
They also, if they have College Credit Plus or any post-secondary options, whatever it was called prior to that, they may be able to apply those courses to the foundational coursework. Then we already discussed this academic readiness benchmark. That benchmark is a GPA of a 2.75. So they also, during that first year or however long it takes them to complete the roughly 60 credit hours prior to the apprenticeship, they will need to demonstrate continued employment as a paraprofessional. And then the preparation for the apprenticeship phase is really an application.

15:08–15:28
It would be an interview. It's similar to our process for applying for advanced study in our traditional programs. That's a licensure requirement for us. So we need to have some similarity, some parity between how the apprenticeship students experience the advanced study phase. We'll call it the apprenticeship.

15:29–15:57
That's what it is. But there does need to be some similarities. And some of that is because we also want the apprentices, when they graduate, to be able to be fully assured that their four-year degree meets the same quality and standards as our traditional four-year degree in Bachelor of Science in Special Education and Early Intervention. So the actual apprenticeship is years two and three. They have registered apprenticeship status.

15:58–16:27
That means they're registered with the Ohio system and the federal system, which is called RAPIDS. So we then have, on our end as the sponsor, quite a bit to do. We have record-keeping and recording that we have to do to make sure that we're documenting the on-the-job training that they're receiving. We'll be audited once a year for our practices of keeping all of our bookkeeping with us. And so that's kind of a big deal.

16:28–16:38
And being an apprentice also offers some opportunities for them that are different than our traditional students. I'll go into that, I think, on the next slide. But in years two and three, they begin the apprenticeship. It's coursework. It's on-the-job training.

16:39–17:11
It's intensive mentorship. And then it's the university coursework that's aligned to the practice. In this case, the third year, we're still devising the plan of study, but we're going to plan for a year of student teaching. We have other programs at Kent State that have the student teaching spread out across the year. This will be even more thoughtful in how it's done, allowing the registered apprentice to really maintain their full-time work status.

17:12–17:43
So we want to be very cognizant of the demands of full-time work. And so we see this as an opportunity in how we design the student teaching expectations to be really sensitive to that. So that's an exciting, I think, difference of this program to our traditional programs. Financial aid and additional supports are really one of the big keys that's open to an apprentice that is different than our traditional students. So apprentices are eligible for Workforce Opportunity Innovation Act funding.

17:44–18:20
Now that differs from county to county in how it's dispersed. And in some cases, some counties are kind of more limited in how they disperse it. But we want to help the apprentices navigate that, connect them to the Ohio means jobs contacts for apprentices in their county so that they can go through the checklist of application to find out their eligibility for those funds. But besides those funds, we're going to work with them to complete FAFSA. We think that's a really good step to determine if there's any Pell Grant eligibility.

18:21–18:58
Pell Grants do not have to be repaid. So it's an important step. But then that also, through our Kent State system, gives us a fuller picture of other potential scholarships and grants that we have that they might also be eligible for. So the financial aid supports will be robust with this program because we want to, you know, we recognize that some of our potential students are coming from having never maybe attended college or having some college or having attended college a really long time ago. And so meeting those and benefiting from those additional supports is something that we anticipate.

18:58–19:39
Of course, they'll be employed, so they'll have earned wages while they're obtaining their degree. So during the apprenticeship. But another, I guess, cost savings that we've anticipated providing is this program will be online. And the first phase of it, the pre-apprentice phase, we have looked at our roadmap and 95% of the courses are offered through our regional campus system. That's an important designation because regional campuses, their tuition rate is 47% this year for the 25-26 year, 47% of the Kent campus tuition rate.

19:40–20:22
So having those students leverage the regional campuses, which many of these potential apprentices, these potential students will live closer to those campuses. We think that's really wise. So I've been working, we've been working with our regional campus vice president and the advising and the oversight of the regional campus enrollment specialists to teach them about this program for that so that they're ready to support potential apprentices who are taking their pre-apprentice coursework at the regional campuses and through the regional campuses. So we're pretty excited about that. Next steps.

20:22–20:55
So we are excited to offer this pathway beginning in the fall. And so we need to connect with people who are interested. And so we're asking you to help us to determine if you have any paraprofessionals. So in the next slide, you'll see there's a little QR code that will take you to a form you can submit that will give us the names and contact information for people that you believe who are at your ESCs or districts would be terrific for this. And perhaps you've already had a conversation with them.

20:56–21:20
Eventually, after we've developed a list of apprentices, we'll send you some information about like, what are we committing to? We do this already with our student teaching arrangements, our field placement arrangements. We have a memorandum of understanding. It just explains the different roles that we have. And so we'll send that out to you as well. Then we'll assign a liaison.

21:21–22:28
We'll ask who will be the contact from your ESC or from your district that will be working with us so that we have close contact to help us reach the apprentices, but also who we can provide information to to help them navigate the apprentices, navigate what they need to do. We appreciate your help publicizing the apprentice info sessions, as I mentioned, we're going to be sending out this recording of this session. There'll be some information about the four apprentice info sessions that will be the four Thursdays of February. So we'd appreciate your support with that. And then at the end of the spring semester, before summer, we'd appreciate your help in the recruitment of mentor teachers. We don't anticipate having a huge cohort only because this is new and it's a pretty short time frame. So I don't think that that recruitment will necessarily be time consuming because we may not have a lot of people that are ready for the apprenticeship phase and we do not need the mentor teachers until they're ready for the apprenticeship phase. So just to know that's a fairly light commitment, that part of it.

22:29–23:18
Number five, the recruitment timeline. So this is recruiting potential apprentices is February 1st through actually it's April 30th. I changed it on another version of this slide. We're going to extend it through most of spring semester so that you have plenty of time to to be able to meet with with your your folks and to be able to connect them to us. And that also gives our advisor, we have one academic advisor who will be working with this program. She has to look at each set of transcripts and it's pretty time consuming because sometimes she'll have to ask for syllabi and have to evaluate the syllabi to see how closely they align to our our courses that are required for licensure. So some of that just needs more time than two months. So we're going to we're going to give up through the end of February or April.

23:19–23:47
Excuse me. Here's that link I mentioned, that QR code that you can scan right now or you can wait until we send this out. We would love if you could complete and submit this sooner than later. I know we put by the end of the week or the month, but I understand that with with the calamity days that you've had to take this week, it's it's unlikely that you may have time to reach out to people directly. So we can extend that for into the first week of February. But we just want to make sure you realize that we have info sessions starting next Thursday, February 5th, and those will be running through the whole month of February.

23:48–24:18
And those will be helpful for for potential apprentices to attend. So I'm ready to entertain some questions. I'm going to start with the first one that's in the chat that came in that was about can they be employed as a preschool paraprofessional? Absolutely. Yeah, they sure can. No problems with that.

24:19–25:48

Any other questions? You're welcome to post them in the chat. You're welcome to use the hand feature, whatever is most convenient. So the cost is is a little hard to give a figure because it depends. It depends on the FAFSA report. So we can't require people to do FAFSA, but we can encourage it. And so that's the first consideration, what federal aid is available and then what scholarships, what we owe of funds, which are the funds that are available to people that are in a registered apprenticeship. So I don't know. It really depends. And it also depends on how many prior credits, how much credit for prior learning.  So all of that is difficult for us to forecast. We really would need to meet with the individual and walk you through the application process through our financial aid office to make sure that we give you the fullest, most complete picture. Tuition, just so you know, at the Kent campus is roughly five hundred dollars a credit hour. Now, as I mentioned, it's roughly half of that at the regional campuses. That's another part of this that's complicated, depending on how many courses an apprentice takes through our regional campuses greatly reduces the tuition load. So sorry, it's not a clean answer. 

25:49–25:53
Jennifer, I can't see your last name, but I see your hand up.

25:54–26:04
Jennifer: Hi. So you had said that some of it would be or that it would be an online platform, but they would also be eligible to take classes possibly at the regional campuses?

26:05–27:15
Lisa: Yeah, and through the regional campuses of the pre-apprentice coursework, so that's the coursework that's prior to the apprenticeship. Most of the courses are online. There's really just a couple that we're really having trouble getting fully online. American Sign Language, and you kind of get why that's not the best course to have online. It's better to have it face to face and in person because of the physicality of it. But really, almost everything else, it really also depends on how someone is placed in their math course. If they need some of the there's plus there's some supportive math that goes before the two classes that are required. Those courses are not offered online. So that's what I mean by like 90 to 95 percent of the courses are offered online through our regional campuses. And if they did need to go in person for ASL, they do offer that at some of our regional campuses. So just that just depends. Any other follow up questions with that?

27:16–27:34
Jennifer: I was—just real quick. Does that mean that... Oh, I lost it. The regional. Oh, so you foresee that that on that pre-apprentice to be just that first just be a year or however long it takes. And then once you get those requests, prerequisites, then they go into the two year.

27:35–28:21
Lisa: Right. So we don't know for sure how long. Again, this is where the advising becomes pretty individualized. It could be longer than a year. It really depends on on what how much credits someone brings in and also how much how much of an advantage they take of the prior learning assessment. So there are a number of courses that we're offering that can be earned credit through prior learning assessments. But you do have to take advantage of that. And so it's a portfolio you have to put together. And some people may not want to do that. So we're looking at almost a semester and a half worth of courses that could be obtained through the prior learning assessment, which would greatly cut the time.

28:22–28:48
And some of those are credit by exam. One of those is, you know, so again, this is where I hope that we can really communicate clearly that it makes a difference to talk to us and to have an advising appointment because it is this is complicated. It's not it's not a check the box, super simple way to show how how much time it will take and how much money it will take. Julie, you have do you have something to add to that?

28:49–29:36
Julie: Yeah, I was just going to say once this and this is probably for a little bit down the road, but I work if you all don't know, I work with recruitment for our college and there are a lot of programs in your schools that have those career techs. So if they're in a teaching professions or early childhood program, if they can get college credit plus. So that all counts. So if you if there are students that identify even earlier than already being a paraprofessional and they're a high school student that they're like, you know, I want to do this. I can work with them. Rachel can work with them. We can work with them to see what kinds of classes they could take and take advantage of that college credit plus and all those different programs that we have for college credit for students. So that can be kind of rolled into that as well.

29:37–29:56
Yeah. So and I appreciate Julie bringing that up. We will be offering a pre-apprenticeship pathway as well. I'm just beginning to work on that. I have a meeting tomorrow and a meeting next week on that. So we will have that up and running for high school students by fall. But it's not quite up yet. 

29:56–30:08
I'm going to work through some of the questions in the chat. One of the questions was, are all the courses in an online format? That's a Lori Sleekhart. That's the goal, Lori, that all the courses will be eligible to be offered online.

30:09–30:51
Now, I mentioned ASL. We're still working on that, but that one may not we may not be able to offer online. But all of the the courses that are related to the apprenticeship, once they hit that phase, they will all be offered online and they should mostly be offered asynchronously. It really depends, though, on some of the learning outcomes. We may have some synchronous elements that are a part of those courses, but that would all be clearly articulated in advance prior to the course starting through our Canvas learning management system. So fully online, but maybe not all asynchronous. There may be some synchronous elements.

30:52–31:30
Bethany Wooden asked, you said 60 credit hours prior to apprenticeship, perhaps. Now, remember, I also said we have to evaluate transcripts. We need to see the commitment to submitting portfolios for prior learning assessments or taking credit by exam. This is where it gets a little tricky. So 60 is half of the degree, and that is what's required on our roadmap prior to being eligible for the apprenticeship. But not everyone will have 60 credit hours to take. So so we need to meet with with potential apprentices and look at their portfolio of stuff and to consider before we can really nail down what that person actually has to complete.

31:31–32:09
Misty Wheeler asked, is there a number of years a parapro would need to be working for your district to determine eligibility? Not on our end, no, and not by federal or state guidelines.  So they just need to be currently employed at this point of inquiry. Now, they'll need to be employed prior to being eligible for the apprenticeship. So if you inquire now and are not renewed next year, that could be difficult then. You'd have to find another job as a parapro somewhere else to be eligible for the apprenticeship. So that's the tricky part. You do have to be employed as a parapro through the whole time that you're an apprentice.

32:10–32:52
Frank asked, this would not be something a school secretary could do. So no, they would have to be employed as a paraprofessional in a setting where they're working with K-12 learners or pre-K through 12 learners. The only caveat with this that would be different is they could be in a 6 through 12 setting as a paraprofessional. There's enough overlap on the work process schedule that we can justify that. But that still is going to have some extra coordination. But a school secretary doesn't do the kind of work that an aide does directly with students. So no, they can't be an apprentice.

32:53–33:43
Marie Williams asked, so looking at the survey, we are asked to identify interested paras. I'm not sure because we are just learning the particulars and paras have not heard the info yet. Do we need to provide names? We need to get connected to them. So you don't have to consider this a sponsorship yet. You're not. They're nowhere near being ready for that. That's a that's a formal agreement that's through our sponsor. You know, as our sponsor, we have to provide an employer acceptance agreement. So you're you're not by submitting that form doing any of that. It's just connecting us to the apprentice. So I would say, you know, if you want to not use the form, then if you could just email us, but we need that information or we can't we can't begin the process. Any other questions? 

33:46–34:03
Renee: So the form is for you to make a recommendation and then we could reach out to that parapro and invite them to our sessions. Again, it's not a commitment. It is simply you recommending someone that you feel in your school district that would be fitting for this type of pathway.

34:08–34:14
Attendee: Thank you for clarifying.

34:15–34:42
Lisa: Well, if there's no other questions that you would like to ask whole group, I'm happy to stay on. Renee and Julie, we're happy to stay on and answer any questions one on one. Please take a moment if you haven't already and access that that link to that form. You know, we're really excited to connect with your folks and hope that we can get moving on that fairly soon so that we can get them the information they need to make a good decision.

34:36–34:56
Renee: Here's the QR code and link if you want to check that out again.

34:57–35:08
Lisa: Thank you.

35:09–35:22
Jennifer: I did have one more question. So the financial support from the ESC, would that be. For the mentor teachers, because really it sounds like the paraprofessionals would be paying it. Mostly on their own, is that correct?

35:23–35:44
Lisa: Yeah, the paraprofessionals are paying mostly on their own. Mentor teachers will receive a stipend similar to how our mentor teachers do for serving as a cooperating teacher. So they will be paid a stipend. It will be in the same manner that we pay folks who take our student teachers for student teaching.

35:47–36:00
Jennifer: Excellent. This is really exciting. Thank you.

36:00–36:16
Lisa: Well, if there aren't any further questions, we'll go ahead and end the meeting and I'll end the recording right now. And we appreciate you coming.