A recent article in the Wisconsin State Journal spotlights Madison’s Grow Your Own to Teacher program,  a partnership among the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD), Madison College, and the UW–Madison School of Education.

The program enables district staff such as education and special education assistants to earn a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and a teaching license for kindergarten through ninth grade at little to no cost while continuing to work in the district. Participants complete coursework through Madison College and UW–Madison.

After graduating, participants commit to teaching at an MMSD elementary or middle school for three years, fulfilling both the program requirement and the UW–Madison Teacher Pledge. Through the Teacher Pledge, the School of Education covers the equivalent of in-state tuition and fees, testing, and licensing costs for teacher education students, in exchange for a pledge to work at a Wisconsin PK-12 school for three to four school years after graduation.

This spring, the first Grow Your Own participants completed coursework at Madison College and began taking classes at UW–Madison.

Jen Schoepke, director of special projects for MMSD and the UW–Madison School of Education, spoke in the article about the benefits of recruiting teachers from within the district.

“You’re developing a workforce that has all of these experiences and backgrounds that match what our kids’ experiences and backgrounds are,” Schoepke said. “They know how it felt to not see their path forward, or to not understand all the steps it takes to get to somewhere … and now they’re there to help their students do it, and so it’s amazing to be able to have all these different types of identities come through as our teachers.”

The article notes that Schoepke helped lead the creation of Grow Your Own, which launched in 2024 with its first cohort. The program’s third cohort will start this fall with 14 participants.

“As a district, we want to meet our workforce needs, and we want to diversify our teaching staff, specifically thinking about … people who really know our community,” Schoepke said. “They know our kids, they know our district, and growing those people up into becoming teachers seems like a really great pathway to follow.”

Read the full article to learn more about the Grow Your Own to Teacher program.