At a time when South Carolina’s teachers are leaving the field, one rural school district has found a solution to the retention crisis.
Williamsburg County School District in the northeastern Pee Dee region has improved its retention rates by adopting a “grow your own” approach to teacher recruitment. Locals say they are from Williamsburg County unless they live in Kingstree, the region’s largest city, or Nesmith, an unincorporated region in the area. The place is filled with large stretches of low farmland and wide skies. Fields are broken up by the occasional house or barn.
While residents call Kingstree a city, it is a small town consisting of a Main Street lined with restaurants and clothing stores. The lack of attractions is one of the reasons the district has struggled in the past to hire and keep teachers in its schools. But over the past couple of years, the district has used alternative teacher certification programs to tap into talent that is already in the area.
Alternative teacher certification programs allow participants to earn a teacher’s certificate without having to go back to college for a second bachelor’s degree. Participants can teach while enrolled in the program as they earn credits toward their certification.
The number of alternative certification programs across the county has skyrocketed over the past decade, according to research from the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress. There isn’t conclusive data on whether teachers who are certified through such programs do better or worse than those who earn a traditional teaching degree.
Kingstree Middle School football players practice in the field behind the school in the late afternoon sun in Kingstree on Sept. 20, 2022. Henry Taylor/Staff
But the programs remain somewhat controversial because of their high dropout rates, particularly in for-profit programs. Enrollment in these programs increased by 283 percent from 2010-11 to 2018-19, the Center for American Progress found. The number of students completing those programs rose by 34 percent during the same period.
Williamsburg school officials believe they have found a way to use the programs effectively, allowing the district to bring in and retain top-quality educators. School officials don’t suggest just any local resident enroll in these programs. They target people they have relationships with who are already involved in the school and possess qualities they look for in teachers.
The district believes this recruitment tactic has improved retention because these new teachers have roots in the area, have a historic relationship with the schools and are grateful for the district supporting them during their certification process. It's what the district credits as the reason all of its nine traditional schools have improved their teacher retention rates over the past four years, according to a Post and Courier analysis of over 1,100 of South Carolina’s public and charter schools.
The accomplishments in Williamsburg County are notable because rural districts have a harder time recruiting, much less retaining, teachers due to issues like low pay, isolation and the propensity of these schools to ask teachers to do work outside the parameters of their jobs.
Districts that struggle academically also suffer from lower teacher retention rates.
State Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman cited a poor academic track record as one of the reasons her department in 2018 announced that it was taking over the school district. The state has indicated that it soon plans to return control back to the local school board.
The recruitment strategy didn’t come from the takeover, but from district and school officials. The district has improved its teacher retention rate as others across the state have struggled to keep teachers on staff. South Carolina reported its highest number of teacher vacancies in February in 21 years, according to the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention, and Advancement.
To see how and why the strategy works, look at the story of Cathy Rose.
Cathy Rose, a longtime community member and teacher at Kingstree Middle Magnet School, stands in the field behind her home in New Zion for a portrait on Sept. 20, 2022. Henry Taylor/Staff
Homeward bound
Rose didn’t grow up wanting to be a teacher. She moved to the Kingstree area from Florida when she was 10. She remembers Kingstree as a tight-knit community where everyone knew each other.
Her grandparents raised her to be diligent and respectful, teaching her that she needed to be home before it got dark and finish her homework before going to bed. Rose rarely missed curfew. She graduated from high school and went to Saint Augustine’s University in North Carolina, where she majored in English.
She originally planned to go to law school, but her dreams changed after she moved back close to her home. She fell in love and got married, and didn’t feel like she had to become a lawyer to be happy. She bounced around various law enforcement and government jobs for over a decade before she started working as a part-time substitute teacher for Williamsburg school district in 2018, mostly filling in at Kingstree Middle Magnet School of the Arts. She was nervous because the school had her filling in for music and social studies classes rather than subjects she was more comfortable with, like English.
She spent her evenings researching whatever historical events they were going to discuss in her social studies classes. She wasn’t musical, but spent hours learning about music theory.
“You’ve got to be prepared because those kids, they’re prepared,” she said.
She was soon promoted to a full-time substitute and believed she was a well-respected part of Kingstree Middle Magnet’s community. She felt at home working in the same district where she attended as a child.
Then the principal called her to his office.
A fork in the road
Whenever Rose went to the principal’s office she felt like a child again. She was nervous that she mis-stepped or did something wrong. As she walked to the office, she repeated affirmations that everything was going to be OK.
James Carraway, the principal at the time, greeted her with a big smile. He asked if she had ever considered becoming a teacher and suggested she enroll in an alternative certification program.
A small note with a to-do list is secured by a magnet next to a small photo of Cathy Rose as a child at her home in New Zion on Sept. 20, 2022. Henry Taylor/Staff
South Carolina has nine such programs, according to S.C. Department of Education spokesman Derek Phillips. Those who want to enroll need to have a college degree, have a related major in the field they want to teach, and they must pass a test related to the subject area they want to teach.
One of the program's goals is to get people like Rose — who have degrees but might not initially have considered becoming a teacher — interested in education. They are designed to make the profession more accessible by allowing participants to go through the certification process while continuing to work.
Hipp said they also get so-called subject matter experts into the classroom, such as getting a person who majored in political science and worked in politics to teach a U.S. government class. Or, in Rose’s case, get an English major to teach English language arts.
The state's Program of Alternative Certification for Educators (PACE) structure appealed to Rose. The three-year program allows participants to teach at an approved grade level and subject area based on their bachelor’s degree concentration, according to its website. It instructs them through a combination of training institutes, seminars and continued learning assignments.
But Rose still worried about enrolling after being out of school for such a long time. Carraway kept asking her for an answer about whether she was going to go for her certification, but she avoided giving him a response. She signed up for the subject matter test, which is called the Praxis test, without telling family or friends even though they were supportive of her getting her certificate.
As the test date approached, she kept thinking: I’m not ready, I’m not ready. She went to the test’s website determined to push the date back, but found out she would be charged $75 if she changed it. She decided to go forward with it and see how she did.
The test results were expected some 20 to 30 days later. Still, Rose checked her email every couple of minutes for weeks.
She found out she passed in the summer of 2019. She knew Carraway would be working at the school that day, so she drove over and strode into his office. She threw her test results down on his desk and told him she was going to enroll in the alternative certification program. Everyone in the office was excited.
But the hard work was only beginning.
Unexpected struggles
Rose had to drive about two hours to Charleston every weekend for class. She learned about teaching strategies she hadn’t known about before. Sometimes these teaching methods were incorporated into the lessons themselves to show participants how they worked.
One learning tool Rose liked was called four corners. Easel pads with easy-tear paper were positioned in each corner of the room. The class was divided into four groups, with each told to go to an easel. They were given a question to answer as a group. Each group wrote their answers on their pad, presented them to the class, and received constructive feedback. Then they moved to a new corner, where they were given a different question and went through the process again.
Nearby trees cast shadows on the front entrance sign at Kingstree Middle Magnet School in Kingstree on Sept. 20, 2022. Henry Taylor/Staff
Rose also liked the program’s camaraderie. By this time, she was teaching English language arts at Kingstree Middle Magnet. She was placed with people who taught the same subject.
“We talked about our struggles and got advice about what to do in the classroom and what actually works,” she said.
Then the coronavirus pandemic hit in March 2020.
Rose had finished the first leg of the program. She was supposed to go to an intensive session where she would be going to class every weekday for two weeks. The pandemic meant she had to do the intensive session online.
“You still had the opportunity to meet with other teachers and talk to them, but it wasn’t the same,” she said.
Like teachers all over the country, she struggled with teaching her classes of 20-plus students over video platforms like Zoom. She found it difficult to engage students when they were at home because many children considered it a place for relaxation.
She thought about quitting the program, but had a support system of family, friends, and fellow teachers who were rallying for her to get her certificate.
Rose stuck with it. She thought educating her students would return to normal when students all came back for in-person learning for the 2021-22 school year.
That’s when many teachers reached their breaking point.
Photos: Kingstree community in Williamsburg County
Williamsburg County schools have been able to dramatically increase teacher retention rates over the course of the last five years. Part of what they credit is a strong community, what does that look like?
A resident walks down the street past Freedom Worship Center in Kingstree on Tuesday, September 20, 2022. Henry Taylor/Staff
A new dream
Shortly after South Carolina students returned to in-person learning in August 2021, the delta variant tore through the state, forcing many schools to go back to remote learning. A Post and Courier analysis of Department of Education data found that during the first seven weeks of class at least 15 districts and 233 schools went virtual, and at least 156,169 students were learning remotely.
Soon after the delta variant abated, the omicron wave forced many schools to go remote again in January 2022.
Rose didn’t just find the waves of COVID-19 variants hard to deal with. Her students were all on different levels academically. Some had been learning in person much of the previous year and were used to orderly classroom environments. Others had been learning virtually and had trouble sitting still and staying engaged when they came back to the classroom. Their study habits were also lacking.
“Kids were even coming in without backpacks,” she said.
CERRA revealed in its February report that there were 1,121 teacher vacancies statewide. Of those, 980 were from teachers who left their job mid-year. Sherry East, president of one of the top teacher associations in the state, called the findings alarming because it is rare for teachers to leave their positions mid-year.
Rose wasn’t sure if her alternative certification program lessons could help her manage a post-pandemic classroom. But as the year progressed, students got back into the routine of in-person learning. Their engagement and study habits improved.
Yet Rose was still nervous about applying the skills she learned for her certificate program.
Carraway, the principal, pulled her aside after observing one of her classes. He told her to trust her instincts: If she wanted to separate two students who talked all the time, she should. If she wanted to try an innovative teaching method, she should go for it.
She wasn’t sure whether using the four corners strategy would work for her large class, but she decided to try her own variation of it. She divided her 25 students into five groups and added an extra “corner.” They were learning essay writing and were working on an exercise where they had to answer a question by using part of the question itself. The class went seamlessly. They all gave each other thoughtful critiques and their writing improved.
Rose passed the test completing the alternative certification program at the end of August. When she found out her results, she celebrated with two teachers she was close to and who knew about her journey. Becoming a teacher wasn’t her original dream, but it's her new one.
A school bus drives by while the Kingstree Middle School football team practices in the field behind the school in Kingstree on Tuesday, September 20, 2022. Henry Taylor/Staff
