HOLLAND, MI – Holland Public Schools has partnered with Hope College to create a no-cost teacher preparation program next school year.
Students will be able to complete the first two years of their bachelor’s degree while they’re still in high school.
Incoming juniors at Holland Public Schools can now enroll in the new “Hope to Teach program,” a Teacher Preparation Early College program that will start in fall 2022, the school district recently announced.
Students can earn up to 61 college credit hours during their junior and senior years of high school. After they graduate, they can complete the final two years of their Bachelor of Education degree at Hope College.
The early college program is no-cost to students and their families during their first two years, meaning all tuition, books and fees will be paid for by Holland Public Schools while they’re in high school, officials say.
The district won’t continue to cover expenses once a student graduates, but they can apply for financial aid as a college student.
The idea behind the program is to make it easier for high schoolers to pursue a career in education while also getting students fired up about teaching, said Andrea Mehall, director of the Holland Early College program.
Officials say the initiative will also help tackle the lack of diversity in the teaching profession, by creating a pipeline for Holland’s students – nearly half of whom are Hispanic and Latino – to earn a teaching degree.
“This is an opportunity to ‘grow our own’ teacher talent as we work to address the increasing teacher shortage, both locally and nationally,” Mehall told MLive/The Grand Rapids Press in an emailed statement.
“This is also an effort to diversify the teacher candidate pool, to ensure that our students have teachers that look like them and reflect their own backgrounds, because representation matters.”
Scott VanderStoep, dean of social sciences at Hope College, said the future K-12 teaching workforce will have to be diverse to meet the needs of a diverse student population.
“Recruiting a diverse student body in Hope’s teaching education program has been a priority of ours for many years,” VanderStoep said in a statement. “We are hopeful that this program will allow us to identify students from traditionally underrepresented groups who want to train to be a K12 teacher at Hope.”
Students can apply to the program at the end of their sophomore year at Holland High School, according to the district. Applicants will be chosen based on their GPA, a review of their credits, and input from teachers.
The new program is currently capped at three students a year, but could grow based on student interest, Mehall said.
Holland students accepted in the program will be concurrently enrolled in their high school and college courses during their last two years of high school, meaning they’ll take the college classes during their high school day, Mehall said.
If a student has a schedule conflict during the day, the district will try to accommodate the student by signing them up for classes outside of the school day, like an evening course, she said.
High schoolers will go to Hope’s campus during the day to take the classes, which will be taught by Hope faculty, she said.
Hope College also partners with the school district on other initiatives like Upward Bound, a pre-college preparatory program for students from low-income and first-generation families. Hope also provides after-school services to Holland students through the Children’s After School Achievement (CASA) program and Step-Up.
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