Program at RHS Getting Seniors Ready for Careers in Education

Revere Public Schools recently launched a district-wide initiative for recruiting more teachers of color in order to diversify the staff and make the schools across Revere more reflective of the city and its population.

What RPS administrators found was there is already a talented and diverse group of students who are interested in going into teaching, administration, counseling, psychology that are part of Revere High School’s “Pathway Program”.

The district figured why not tap into this pool of students and help them stay on the path towards a career in education.

“So we’ve had an opportunity through a partnership with Youth Works and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to provide paid internships this semester for RHS seniors,” said RHS Coordinator of College Careers and External Learning Opportunities Tiffany Currie. “These students are currently working in public schools in the district.”

Currie said these forty or so high school seniors with a serious interest in becoming a teacher, a school administrator, or a guidance counselor one day are in classrooms in pretty much every Revere school.

“They are helping in a variety of ways,” said Currie. “They’re helping with classroom teachers. They’re working with small groups of students. They’re assisting with administrative tasks for teachers, they are grading, putting information together, they’re out at recess playing with students, helping them in the cafeteria. So they’re all over the district doing different things based on the needs of the school.”

These RHS seniors take the course as an elective, which is part of RHS’s internship class.

“Some students are out of RHS for two periods a day and at another school in the district,” said Currie. “So they actually might go to a school until 11 am and then come back and finish their core classes at RHS or they might leave at 11 am and then stay at another school assisting teachers and administrators for the rest of the school day.”

With COVID robbing many seniors of a real high school experience during their sophomore and junior years, the program is a hands on approach and real world experience in a career they may want to pursue.

“I think that’s the key because it really shows these students what it is like to be a teacher on a day to day basis,” said Currie. “We can all say, “Oh, you can be a teacher or you can be an electrician, or you can be this or that” but what does it really mean? What do these careers look like?”

Revere has also partnered with Salem State University as part of the program–a college known for its school of education.

“We will be taking students that are in this pathway to meet with students in the School of Education,” said Currie. “They’re also going to meet with faculty and get an admissions overview to really understand the requirements that go into becoming a teacher as well as the supports that are in place to eventually graduate with that degree.”

Currie said the most exciting part is the school district has committed to working with these students once they leave RHS and hire them once they graduate college.

“The plan is to kind of grow our own teachers so it’s a pretty cool initiative,” said Currie. “There are quite a few educators that work for RPS now that went to school here. So we’re really trying to recruit a diverse population to represent our students that are in our schools. That’s the focus of this district initiative is diversifying the population of teachers in education in Revere.”