Last week, the Sand Springs Board of Education approved the Oklahoma State University Registered Teacher Apprentice Pathway Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).
The MOU will provide a job-embedded degree option through the Elementary Education online program that allows public-school support staff personnel to count work experiences as on-the-job training or receive teacher preparation training at their work site.
“This is a new pathway, developed through the allowance of the law, that OSU is doing, basically providing degree options for people that already are currently working in a district,” Superintendent Sherry Durkee said. “We have seven people that are going through this program to become fully certified, that are working as peer professionals. So, they're in the classroom already.”
Durkee said Oklahoma City Public Schools and Tulsa Public Schools have made similar MOU agreements with other state universities.
Durkee said previously people would have to quit their jobs to go back fulltime to school to get into a program to get their full certification.
“And so, now, maybe likely a result of the teacher shortage, they're allowing job-embedded opportunities,” she said. “So, that means these people continue to work for our district, take their coursework and become fully certified in a year and a half, depending how many hours they have.”