MEDIA CONTACT: Sherry Thomas
561-297-2328, sthomas@fau.edu
FAU’s College of Education invites Belle Glades businesses to sponsor teachers candidates in Project Good FIT
BOCA RATON, FL (September 18, 2006) – Florida Atlantic University’s College of Education Dean, Dr. Gregory F. Aloia, met recently with local business and community leaders at a Belle Glade Chamber of Commerce meeting to invite them to sponsor students in Project Good FIT (First Introduction into Teaching). Project Good FIT is a newly developed program to recruit more individuals into teaching by immersing them into the profession early in their college career. Florida will need to hire 20,000 teachers each year for the next ten years to keep pace with rising student enrollment, an aging teacher force and to meet the state’s constitutional requirement to reduce class sizes.
As many as 50 percent of freshmen education majors change to other fields within the first two years of college, in part due to a lack of any meaningful contact with schools, teachers and classroom teaching prior to their student teaching experience. Project Good FIT encourages entering college freshman who identify teaching as their major to stay with their chosen career choice by placing them into a paid professional experience one day per week as instructional interns working with some of the best teachers in the county.
Research has shown that most rural teachers were raised close to where they now teach. Successful “grow-your-own” teacher recruitment and retention strategies have been those that offer incentives such as assistance with obtaining required education and training to local residents with a potential to become teachers. Dr. Bev Robinson, provost of Palm Beach Community College’s Belle Glade campus, has offered to help FAU’s College of Education identify the first 25 teacher candidates for Project Good FIT in the Glades. PBCC students in Belle Glade who have expressed an interest in teaching will be matched up with mentor teachers in local schools.
A business or individual can sponsor a Project Good FIT student for $6100 a year. The sponsorship will pay for the student’s tuition and fees at the community college, allow the student to be paid as an instructional intern, provide a stipend to the student’s mentoring teacher and help off set the cost of the onsite project coordinator. President of the Bank of Belle Glade, Mr. Stephen M. Prielozny, has signed up to be the first sponsor of a Project Good FIT teacher candidate.
The statistics for turnover among new teachers is startling with some 20 percent choosing to leave the classroom within the first three years. When asked why they leave, new teachers say they feel overwhelmed by the expectations and scope of the job, or they feel they did not get the support they needed to be successful in the classroom. Research shows that new teachers who participate in induction programs that involve mentoring are nearly twice as likely to stay in the profession as those who do not.
“Project Good FIT will enable us to provide realistic teaching experience with excellent mentors to ensure that students in our program are provided with good role models and hands-on experience in the classroom,” said Aloia.
Project Good FIT is a win-win for all involved parties. Children in the participating schools will benefit through more one on one and small group instruction provided by the Project Good FIT instructional interns; students in the program will be able to “test-drive” the teaching profession to make sure it is a “good fit” while learning best teaching practices, classroom management and planning skills from seasoned educators, and through their sponsorship, local business and community leaders can continue to be actively involved in helping Belle Glade schools.
For more information on Project Good FIT or sponsoring a student, contact Mr. David Rutherford, director of development for the College of Education, at 561-297-1023 or druthe7@fau.edu.
- FAU -
Florida Atlantic University opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, the University serves more than 26,000 undergraduate and graduate students on seven campuses strategically located along 150 miles of Florida’s southeastern coastline. Building on its rich tradition as a teaching university, with a world-class faculty, FAU hosts nine colleges: the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts & Letters, the Charles E. Schmidt College of Biomedical Science, the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing, the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, and the Colleges of Business, Education, Engineering & Computer Science, and Architecture, Urban & Public Affairs.
