A group of teachers from around the country is at Winthrop University this week, training to prepare teenagers for careers in the classroom.
The Winthrop-based Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention and Advancement is leading the three-day session, which ends today, as part of its flagship program Teacher Cadets.
High school juniors and seniors enrolled in Cadets get hands-on lessons in life as an educator. After learning the fundamentals of teaching, they intern in schools, where they create lessons and teach them to students. For a fee, they can get credit at a partner college.
To enroll, a student must maintain a B average, get five teacher recommendations and write an essay on why he wants to be in the class.
Proponents say the program, designed to turn bright teens into aspiring educators, is essential to creating a lasting pipeline of talented teachers.
"Teacher Cadets was created so that you would have smart people teaching," said Anne Ledford, a Fort Mill High pre-calculus and Cadet instructor who trains educators to lead the class. "You don't want a mediocre teacher. You want the best and the brightest."
CERRA, which is funded entirely by the state, was created in 1985 to encourage promising teens to pursue careers in education and help avert a looming teacher shortage. Its first initiative was the Teacher Cadet program, which has spread across the country.
Roughly 45,000 South Carolina students have gone through the program, which has been adopted by school systems in 34 states. Some 4,000 S.C. teachers are former cadets, according to CERRA.
Recently, Chicago's school system as well as one in Bangladesh have expressed interest in the program, CERRA spokesman Mychal Frost said.
This week Ledford and Angi Brush, who teaches high school English in Summerville, are training teachers to teach Cadets. Most of the 26 educators visiting Winthrop - from as far away as California and New Jersey - are about to teach the program for the first time.
Ledford and Brush shared strategies and offered suggestions on how to make the course interesting for teens.
For example, Ledford explained that when her students spend time in a pre-kindergarten class, they don't take any writing materials so they can focus on what's going on. They do paperwork at home.
In pre-K, "they play," she said. Plus, "you don't want that teacher to think, 'Oh gosh, what's that Cadet writing about me?'"
They also shared anecdotes.
Ledford said she learned to include culturally-relevant examples in her lessons, because when she mentions her collection of 45's, "they say 'Ms. Ledford, you collect guns?'"
"I had to bring in a record to show them what it is."
CERRA offers Teacher Cadet training every summer, but this year is different because it has updated the program's curriculum for the first time since 2005 and plans to roll out a new interactive Web site in conjunction.
The site, scheduled to go online Aug. 1, will include resources for teachers, such as video lessons.
Later this week, trainers will travel the state explaining the changes to Cadet instructors.
Anthony Westphal flew from California for this week's session. It was a refresher course for Westphal, who taught a Teacher Cadet class for seven years before his school district could no longer afford it. Now that the program has been reinstated, Westphal is anxious to teach it again.
"It's a hands-on student engagement program," said Westphal, whose daughter became a fourth-grade teacher after graduating as a Cadet. "It can show kids their calling.
"Teaching it is my give-back. This allows me to really show a group of young people what (education's) merits and values are."
