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  • California’s College Corps has great promise despite growing pains

    California’s College Corps has great promise despite growing pains


    Gov. Gavin Newsom joins Chief Service Officer Josh Fryday and higher education leaders at a College Corps swearing-in celebration.

    Credit: Office of the Governor

    In 2022, the state launched the #CaliforniansForAll College Corps program. Spread across 45 campuses throughout the state, the program is designed to help college students pay for their schooling in exchange for performing community service: It offers $10,000 for 450 hours of service, paid through 10 monthly installments of $700 and an additional $3,000 for completing the program. 

    This new program is well-intentioned, but there is room for improvement.  

    I joined College Corps during its inauguration, under the regional chapter — Sacramento Valley College Corps, formed by California State University, Sacramento; UC Davis; Sacramento City College and Woodland Community College. After completing the application to be a fellow beginning in the summer, I was paired with a host site almost immediately. My placement was with First Star Sacramento State Academy, a college-preparation program aimed at helping high school students within the foster care system graduate and go to college. This help was provided through the tutoring and resources offered by youth mentors, which was my position at First Star. 

    Prior to my admission into College Corps, I was already an employee of First Star; the director of the program worked with College Corps to ensure I got placed there. But I took on a new role: College Corps fellow. 

    This meant I was no longer a student assistant working only 10 hours a week. Now I was expected to work almost double that as a fellow, and my responsibilities grew. 

    My experience with First Star as a youth mentor was wonderful. I already knew the program and the students in it. I had an established relationship with the supervisor, program coordinator and director. It was working under College Corps where challenges arose. 

    After completing one year with College Corps at First Star, I re-enrolled in the program as part of its second cohort. My new host site was Girl Scouts Heart of Central California. Since it was located only seven minutes from my campus, I thought this was going to be a great match.

    Unfortunately, the job required going from city to city, and I do not own a car, so I had to withdraw from the program only one month in. In addition, my supervisor expected us fellows to complete some of our hours in the Modesto office, nearly a 1.5-hour commute. (I learned that right after I left, the remaining fellows were given rental cars to complete their hours.)

    Another problem was that many Girl Scout events took place in the evening, since they were after-school activities for the girls. As a full-time student taking mostly evening classes, I struggled to fulfill my hours as the opportunities to do so were either far away, or at a time I was in class, or both. 

    Since I was part of the very first cohort of the College Corps, it is understandable that my experience was not entirely smooth. 

    For starters, there seemed to be a disconnect with College Corps and the external host sites. Fellows at some placements struggled to complete the required hours because host sites simply didn’t have enough service opportunities. This was a real problem because failure to complete the required hours put College Corps fellows at risk of losing the $3,000 education award promised to them upon completion. 

    Another challenge was the payment method. We were paid via a prepaid debit card that was quite cumbersome to use. I also had problems receiving my $3,000 education award.

    Thankfully, College Corps ditched the prepaid cards in the second year and now pays fellows via simple checks, although direct deposit is still not available for the second cohort. 

    Yesenia Toribio, a Sacramento State student and former College Corps fellow, acknowledged the positives of the program. “I felt very supported by my supervisor at my host site and the staff in charge of leading the cohort for College Corps at Sacramento State. Everyone was so patient and understanding, it made me feel like I was a part of something bigger.

    “I truly believe the downsides were because we were the first cohort and they were still trying to figure out the program,” Toribio said.

    However, she added, “It was difficult trying to manage completing 450 hours of community service while being a full-time student and working part time.” 

    But, despite the growing pains, I can still see the promise and potential of the College Corps. Being part of it provided us with many benefits — not just monetary. The program allowed fellows to get involved with different events such as feeding the homeless, runs, river cleanups and more. The program also allowed fellows to make connections, and I still consider the fellow youth mentors at First Star as my close friends. 

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    Aya Mikbel is a fourth-year student studying political science and journalism at California State University, Sacramento and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • How California can stop losing great teacher candidates before they start

    How California can stop losing great teacher candidates before they start


    Tylyn Fields, with some of her fifth-grade students, is now a beloved teacher. But she almost never made it to the classroom.

    Courtesy: Tylyn Fields

    During California’s most recent teacher shortage, Tylyn Fields, a trained social worker, saw teaching as a calling and a promising career. Smart and motivated to make a difference, she was an excellent candidate for the high-need schools in the community where she lived and worked. Sadly, her research into teacher education revealed an impossible choice. A quality preservice program would require quitting her job for a year of unpaid coursework and student teaching. Taking out more loans was a nonstarter: she already owed thousands for previous student loans.

    We desperately need more well-trained teachers across the state. And while there are countless aspiring teachers eager to make a difference in their communities, the financial barriers to entering the profession are pushing promising candidates toward emergency credentials or away from teaching altogether. Teaching is a public service profession. For too many, their future earnings as public school teachers are not enough to pay back the upfront costs of preparation, causing them to enter the profession as an Intern with little or no training so they can earn a salary, or simply give up on the idea of becoming a teacher.

    California has made impressive progress in recent years to begin addressing this issue. In 2019, the state began investing in the Golden State Teacher Grant (GSTG) program to offer $20,000 tuition grants for teacher candidates who commit to teaching in high-need schools. And over the past 5 years the program has evolved to prioritize candidates who need the funding most and who seek meaningful teacher preparation before becoming teachers.

    The GSTG program has made an extraordinary difference for thousands of teachers, including Tylyn. At the Alder Graduate School of Education, we focus on community-based recruitment of aspiring teachers and saw a significant jump in applications thanks to GSTG. Without the financial support from the state, Tylyn said she would have waited until she could pay off her student loans – about 10 years, she estimated.

    To extend allocated funding for longer, GSTG awards were cut in half – to $10,000 – and the funding has run out. The Governor’s revised May budget for 2025-26 includes $64.2 million for the program, which is barely enough to extend GSTG for one more year.  By the time the funding could be signed into law, teacher candidates will already be enrolled in programs, having less of a potential impact on recruitment.

    We propose three big ideas to better support California’s teacher preparation pipeline. 

    1. Establish consistent financial aid for aspiring teachers so that districts and preparation programs can share reliable recruitment offers with candidates. Multi-year funding for the GSTG program is one way to do this and would allow for more reliable messaging to candidates. Another could be a teacher candidate loan program that could draw from Proposition 98 funds that are somewhat more shielded from the volatility of California’s General Fund.
    1. Create a layered system of needs-based financial support, with baseline financial support for those meeting need criteria, and layered support for candidates who commit to a high-need subject, school, or region. This would broaden access for lower-income individuals while giving the state tools for influencing candidates’ choices.
    1. Restructure aid such that pre-service preparation can compete with the financial appeal of emergency pathways. Ideally, candidates could earn pay and benefits while they learn to teach and have their training costs paid for. We wisely do this for Army and police cadets because it’s unthinkable that we’d send them directly to the field without training or have them pay for their own training. Similarly, teacher candidates should be paid for their pursuit of this public service profession.

    In these tight budget times, the most helpful short-term action is to increase the proposed GSTG reinvestment to cover at least two or three years of awards, so that it is useful for teacher recruitment.

    Ending with some great news: after enrolling in Alder’s pre-service residency program, Tylyn graduated a year later with a teaching credential and master’s degree in Education, and took a job as a elementary school teacher in her local school district. She is about to enter her second year of teaching and she is thriving – her students, principal and colleagues are grateful she was able to become a teacher. As a state, let’s continue to push forward with the good reforms we started six years ago, so that many more candidates like Tylyn can find their way to the classroom.

    •••

    Heather Kirkpatrick is CEO and president of Alder Graduate School of Education, a nonprofit, community-based, professional workforce development pathway that partners with public TK-12 school systems across California.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • A Great Example of Retrieval Practice from Kerrie Tinson’s classroom

    A Great Example of Retrieval Practice from Kerrie Tinson’s classroom


    03.07.25A Great Example of Retrieval Practice from Kerrie Tinson’s classroom

     

    We love to share examples of great teaching on the TLAC blog–especially great teaching that demonstrates core principles of cognitive psychology in action. If you follow the learning science at all you’re probably familiar with the importance of Retrieval Practice: how critical it is to bring previous content back into working memory so students remember it.

    We’ve recently added this beautiful example of Retrieval Practice to our library. It’s from Kerrie Tinson’s English classroom at Windsor High School and Sixth Form in Halesowen, England.

    Kerrie’s students are reading Macbeth and she starts her lesson with a Smart Start that focuses on Retrieval Practice… a series of questions that asks students to review and reflect on things they learned in the first scenes of the play.

     We love how Kerrie asks students to write the answers to her questions–this causes all students to answer–universalizing the retrieval.  We also love how familiar students are with the routine of starting with retrieval. This not not only makes the Retrieval Practice more efficient and easier to use but it socializes them to conceptualize Retrieval Practice as a great way to study on their own.

    As students answer questions, Kerrie circulates and takes careful notes. This allows her both understand what students know and don’t know–you can see that she’s added one question to address a common misunderstanding–and also to Cold Call students to give good answers, which expedites the retrieval, making it efficient and pace-y.

    But Kerrie doesn’t just rely on simple retrieval. She often asks students to “elaborate”: to connect what they are thinking about to other details from the play. For example, when a student recalls that Macbeth was a traitor, she asks “Why was that important?” The connections that come from elaboration build–schema–stronger connected memories that cause student’s knowledge to be connected and meaningful.

    We also love the way she ends the session–by pointing out a couple of key concepts–that Macbeth is Impatient and eager– that are especially important and that everyone should have in their notes.

    All in all its great stuff and we are grateful to Kerri and Windsor High School for sharing the footage with us!

     

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