Districts must step up to support their student teachers

Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

My friend Alex is a student teacher facing a too-familiar problem: the rising cost of gas. 

This fall, her teaching college has placed her in a high school across town, more than 40 minutes from her house in Glendale. But given the high price of filling up her tank, she’s wondering how to afford the end of her teacher training at what amounts to a loss. She already works two jobs to make ends meet. When she asked the college what to do, they first suggested she buy an electric car. Their second — and more realistic— suggestion was to tell her to cross her fingers.

Like Alex, I’m also a student teacher entering my final semester, in my case following a decade in journalism. Since January, that’s meant unpaid teaching during the day, attending credentialing courses at night, and planning lessons over the weekend, all of which leaves precious little time to squeeze in paying work.

This crunch is literally keeping promising educators out of the classroom. A 2021 report by the California Department of Education’s Educator Diversity Advisory Group, which polled practicing public school educators, cited “the unpaid and invisible labor that teachers of color are expected to perform” as a major barrier in diversifying the teaching workforce. Even in comparatively well-off states like Connecticut, surveys reveal that up to 90% of student teachers worry about the cost of groceries and other essentials.

That’s hardly an abstract statistic in my world. After working in the morning as a classroom tutor, one friend races across town to a second school for student teaching. Another picks up odd-hour shifts at a fast food restaurant, which often leaves him exhausted. A third is deciding whether to defer his final semester to save money at a full-time job. Still others have moved back home.

Needless to say, my cohort’s group chat has been ecstatic over the passage of California’s Student Teacher Stipend Program, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last summer, which allocated $300 million in state funding to eligible preservice educators in the form of one-time $10,000 grants beginning this fall. 

There’s just one catch: Student teachers like Alex, who would benefit the most, might not see a dime. And there’s little she can do about it beyond keeping those fingers crossed. 

That’s because, as designed, student teachers do not apply for this funding, but rather receive it automatically when the districts or charter schools they are placed with apply to the program through the state’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing. 

Yet, as the chairperson of our program explained to me over email, the application process might seem daunting and unwieldy for participating schools and districts. They must verify that each assigned student teacher is actually working in their assigned school, then figure out how to distribute the money when we are not on their payroll. 

For large districts like Los Angeles Unified, working with hundreds of student teachers, this amounts to a significant investment of time and resources, given the stipend program allots no extra funding for administration. Some may simply decide the burden is too high, leaving their student teachers in the cold.

It is not like this everywhere. Earlier this year, Pennsylvania also began rolling out $10,000 stipends for student teachers. Unlike here, they’ve hit on the sensible solution of letting students apply for them directly, receiving the funds on a first-come, first-served basis. Sadly, California’s intent to streamline the process only creates new headaches for us.

Right now, our college is telling us to be hopeful and patient. Admirably, they are doing their best to get districts and charter schools to understand the moral imperative of participating in the stipend program, removing roadblocks wherever possible. But given that districts are still determining whether to participate — while many of us have already received our fall placements — they can hardly guarantee which of us will be paid.

After years of declines, California’s teaching workforce is finally rebounding to pre-pandemic levels following significant investment in the teacher pipeline. Along with tuition supports like the Golden State Teacher Grant, the new stipend program has the potential to turn teaching into a long-term sustainable career. But we need help. It is up to every district and charter school that works with student teachers to ensure our stipends become a reality.

We would never ask the students we teach to simply cross their fingers when they encounter a resource problem that’s too big for them to solve. We simply crouch down by their desks and do everything we can to help. Now, we’re calling on every district leader in the state to do the same for us.

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Stephen Noonoo is a preservice secondary English teacher in Los Angeles and a former education journalist whose work has appeared in EdSurge, Edutopia, The New Republic and elsewhere.

The opinions in this commentary are those of the author.