Cheers, tears and dozens of pictures taken by proud parents.
That’s how Travis Early College High School’s first two cohorts — a cohort of 14 sophomores and a cohort of 15 juniors — in the school’s Associate of Arts in Teaching program were celebrated during a pinning ceremony held in the Nursing and Allied Health Complex of San Antonio College on Thursday.
Last year, Travis ECHS launched the program for high school students who want to enter the teaching or human services industry. The pathway allows the students to earn an associate degree and secure three years of practicum experience, shortening the time it would take to complete a bachelor’s degree by two years and smoothening the transition from students to full-time certified teachers.
Noah Urbina, a junior at Travis ECHS, is a part of the teaching program’s first cohort. He has practiced teaching in classrooms ranging from preK to middle school band halls.
Urbina, 16, said he initially entered the program because he comes from a family of educators, but going into schools to get in-the-field training made him love education for himself and for the students.
“It’s rewarding,” Urbina said about teaching. “You get to see kids and students look up [to] you and know that you help them in some sort of way, and that’s what really touches my heart.”
Clinton Roberson, coordinator and instructor for the teaching program, said students in the program learn to write and implement lesson plans, and also complete their core classes while still in high school, which means they have the freedom to take more education-focused courses when attending a university.
Once the program’s participants become sophomores, they’re placed in classrooms throughout the San Antonio Independent School District to assist younger students.
Currently, the teaching program at Travis ECHS partners with Mark Twain Dual-Language Academy, James Bonham Academy, Graebner Elementary School and the University of Texas at San Antonio lab schools.
If students from the teaching program at Travis ECHS go on to get a bachelor’s degree and teacher certification, they would already have five years of experience in education, Roberson said. This provides a smoother transition from being a student to teaching in a classroom compared to more traditional four-year college programs.
Urbina will be part of the first graduating class in the Associate of Arts in Teaching program next year. He plans to enroll at the University of Texas at San Antonio to get a bachelor’s degree and become a middle school band director or history teacher.
The teaching program at Travis ECHS is financially supported by City Education Partners, a nonprofit organization that focuses on closing the education equity gap in San Antonio.
Until the program gets more financial support, Roberson said the pathway will only accept 25 to 30 students every year.
Overall, the teaching program has 83 students enrolled — from a total of 408 students who attend Travis High School.
The early college program at Travis isn’t the first time SAISD has made efforts to smoothen a student’s path into teaching.
During the 2022-23 school year, SAISD had 230 teacher vacancies. That same year the district requested and was ultimately awarded a $113,486 grant from the Texas Education Agency under the agency’s Grow Your Own grant program. The grant is awarded to districts that want to build teacher pipelines within their own communities and address teacher shortages.
According to SAISD’s grant application, the district’s goal was to use funding to “assist in identifying and retaining high-quality, culturally competent potential teachers in [the district’s] high-need content areas including special education and bilingual education.”
In the application, the district said it would identify six highly-qualified candidates who wanted to obtain certifications in special education and/or bilingual education and award them quarterly stipends if they committed two years of service at the district and earned a bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M University-San Antonio by the spring of 2025.
Alamo Heights Independent School District is also looking to build their own teacher pipeline program at their early college campus Alamo Heights High School. During the 2023-24 school year, the district applied for a Grow Your Own grant in the amount of $25,000 for the 2025-26 school year and were already awarded the money, according to the TEA website.
Out of the 4,336 teachers who were hired in the San Antonio area for the 2023-24 school year, 1,272 of them were uncertified, which was an increase from the 1,166 uncertified teachers hired during the 2022-23 cycle.
Only 317 out of the 4,336 new hires for 2023-24 had a bachelor’s degree before entering the teaching field, and 141 new hires were granted emergency permits to teach.
Emergency permits are temporary permits granted by the State Board of Education Commission to individuals with “sufficient teaching requirements” when a school district can’t fill a vacant teaching position.
When asked how the teaching program at Travis ECHS helps address teacher shortages and the increase of uncertified hires in San Antonio, Roberson said the pathway gets students invested early.
“They’ve already hurdled the biggest obstacles, which are usually your college algebra and your college English courses, and they can actually just focus on what they desire,” Roberson said.
Graduates from Travis ECHS aren’t guaranteed to become teachers for SAISD, but Roberson said it’s important for districts to develop educators from their own student populations because they would already understand the barriers that exists in their communities.
“I think when you grab from the same community, you already understand the culture,” Roberson said.
