The numbers tell an amazing story.
Eighteen B.S.Ed. in Elementary Education majors started the third cohort of the College of Education’s PLEDGE (Partnering to Lead and Empower District-Grown Educators) program with Elgin Community College in the fall semester of 2021.
All 18 finished, gathering May 4 to celebrate their accomplishments after two years of being NIU Huskies without ever needing to travel to DeKalb while the coursework came to them and clinical experiences and student teaching were completed in the Elgin area.
Graduating Saturday, May 13, are Arminda Alvarez, Melissa Conley, Maria Gomez, Erica Kick, Natalie Koczwara, Sara Lepek, Cristal Lugo, Lauren Masciopinto, Colleen Morales, Lauren Nacht, Jazmin Navarro, Hilda Pimentel, Madeline Puchek, Rebeca Solis, Cassidy Szymanski, Sheila Vasquez, Priscila Velazquez and Alondra Vivanco.
Such success is becoming a trend; the same 100% completion rate was achieved by the 15 students in the first cohort and the 20 students who followed a year later.
Nearly 90% of those 35 graduates are currently teaching in Illinois schools, and nearly 70% of them are in their hometown classrooms of School District U-46 and District 300.
Five members of the Class of 2023 already have secured jobs for the fall, and a dozen others are actively interviewing with nearby school districts. Some were quick to meet and greet Suzanne Johnson, the interim superintendent of U-46, who not only attended the reception on the ECC campus but also assured the students that she had taken notes.
Ongoing is Cohort Four, which began last summer and is producing another 14 future teachers; 25 more are expected to begin their two-year journey this fall. Seventeen students in the first cohort of Early Childhood Education majors started last summer, and 10 more are anticipated to follow suit this summer.
But it’s the students themselves who tell the most amazing stories.
Cristal Lugo, already hired as a dual-language, second-grade teacher in District 300 for the fall, grew up in Carpentersville.
“I came from the lower socioeconomic perspective, so now I feel like I want to impact Latino communities like those teachers who impacted me,” says Lugo, who now lives in Crystal Lake. “The teachers I had in the past inspired me to be one of them.”
Lugo married and started a family before joining the ECC-NIU cohort; PLEDGE’s Elgin-only delivery of classes, along with the help of her “loving and supportive husband,” put her bachelor’s degree within reach.
She appreciates her coursework in classroom management, and already has applied some of the curriculum from her literature classes in her student-teaching placement.
With her career in education soon to begin, she hopes that sharing the Latino heritage of her future students will similarly empower them to dream big as she has.
“I’m most looking forward to making an impact on these children’s lives. Obviously, I’m looking forward to teaching them and guiding them to the right path, but I definitely want to make sure I can let them know that anything’s possible if they want it,” Lugo says.
“I’m a teacher speaking their own language and able to communicate with them in both languages,” she adds, “and when they know that, if I came from a community like that, and when they see the possibilities that they have, they know they can also become whatever they want.”
Jazmin Navarro, a graduate of Elgin Larkin High School, remembers looking up to her teachers in U-46 as they filled her with knowledge and skills to succeed.
Becoming a teacher herself make sense.
“I’m looking forward to all of it,” says Navarro, who is joining the faculty of District 300’s Golfview Elementary School this fall, “the lesson-planning, being with the other teachers and, most of all, being with the students.”
Taking the PLEDGE route provided “amazing teachers” while allowing her to save money and stay close to her family, who she says are “very proud and very happy. I can’t even explain. There’s just no words for it now.”
Priscila Velazquez also draws influence from her teachers in U-46.
Following her transition out of the bilingual program, however, her Hispanic teachers were few – and in that she found a calling.
“Being Hispanic, and learning about the dual-language program being offered in schools now, I thought that this was an amazing opportunity for me to be able to connect with students and to be able to teach in Spanish and English at the same time,” Velazquez says. “It’s wonderful.”
She believes it’s important to provide Hispanic children with a teacher who looks like them, and is excited start doing so this fall at Lakewood Elementary School in Carpentersville.
“They can feel that connection,” she says, “and when they see someone as a role model, it’s like, ‘I can make it. I can go to the university. I can do whatever I want.’ ”
Alondra Vivanco shares that mission.
“I really want to give back to the community and just show some students of mine who are Hispanic – from a different culture – that they can make it,” says Vivanco, who is from Carpentersville. “I just want to inspire them to be the best versions of themselves.”
Doing so is paying it forward as she remains grateful for her own fourth-grade teacher from a dozen years ago.
“I was going through a tough time, and she was very supportive. She was there for me,” Vivanco says. “The same empathy she showed me I want to give back to some of my students.”
NIU’s program in Elgin was “super-helpful, quick and easy” as well as convenient, she says.
“My life is here, and I am really family-oriented,” she says. “I loved all the teachers, and I feel so prepared for next year. I felt so supported, and I feel that the teachers were giving me so many strategies I can use in the future. I’m so excited to try all those strategies and all the new things I learned. I really am excited to try bridging, Total Physical Response and all those things. I can’t wait to continue. I just want to have my own class. I’m ready.”
LAURIE ELISH-PIPER, DEAN of the NIU College of Education, would agree.
ECC graduates who enroll in PLEDGE “are among the most well-prepared teacher-candidates that we get from any community college in the state of Illinois,” Elish-Piper told the audience at the May 4 reception. “They are motivated, smart, prepared, resilient, collaborative and truly remarkable.”
Scanning the room instilled her with enthusiasm.
“We oftentimes hear about the gloom and doom in the world, and that things are bad,” she said, “but when I listen to, and when I see, this group of new teachers who are poised and ready to go out into classrooms to make a difference not only for their students and their students’ families but for our communities, I feel hopeful. I feel confident. I feel reassured and I feel optimistic. Thank you for choosing the best profession in the world: education.”
The dean also saluted NIU’s collaborators at ECC, the school districts and Alignment Collaborative for Education who are helping to advance PLEDGE and its mission to confront the shortage of teachers.
It began simply.
“About eight years ago, I was thinking, ‘What can we do to get more teachers in the pipeline?’ – and I thought we could take our programs out into the communities,” Elish-Piper said, “where people live and work and want to live and work; where we have needs for teachers; and where there may not be easy access to a high-quality degree-completion program.”
Parul Raval, professor of education at ECC, helped Elish-Piper turn concept into reality. ECC President David Sam became an immediate and continual supporter, encourager and cheerleader.
Further support comes from students, faculty, staff, families, friends, colleagues and external stakeholders.
“Anything that we do that’s worth doing generally tends to be hard, and what makes it easier is partnering with others,” Elish-Piper said. “Relationships and partnerships are vital.”
With 53 newly minted teachers already in the “win column,” meanwhile, the results are clear.
“Teachers who graduate from grow-your-own programs tend to stay in their community and in their school district. They tend to work through their careers in that community,” she said, “and so by growing teachers with the community, we can hopefully retain them for the community.”
President Sam and Elizabeth Herrera, an academic advisor at ECC, are happy to participate.
“Teachers! You have the impact,” Sam said as he reminisced about his own third-grade teacher.
“Where I am educationally today, I can trace back to Miss Elizabeth. She’s never known that. It’s OK. You will make such an impact that many, many of you will never know, but I assure you, the impact is there,” he added. “The impact that you make will not be on the students in the classroom alone, but students and families everywhere.”
Herrera, meanwhile, applauded the initiative that delivers such outcomes.
“I’ve seen how hard you all have worked to get here, and I know that you guys will work just as hard for your students,” Herrera said.
“For many of you, having that bachelor’s degree was not something possible,” she added.
“When this partnership began, the doors opened for many people who want to be teachers, and that’s huge. You might have had work responsibilities or family responsibilities, or the funds or time to commute to a four-year university were very far from what you felt you could do. This partnership really has opened the doors, not just for you but for our community, giving you the opportunity to go out there and hopefully do the same. You’ll have students who you’ll maybe be able to grow into teachers.”
