A new teaching corps at Western Illinois University is poised to help solve the state’s widening teacher shortage by sending qualified, trained teachers to rural school districts in western Illinois.
Through WIU’s Great River Teacher Corps, students can now earn scholarships of up to $14,000 over their four years of college, with an additional $1,000 for use during a student’s senior project. The Looser-Flake Foundation, which is administered by the Quad Cities Community Foundation, is supporting the program with a grant designated for a student in the program from Mercer County.
The grant is a perfect fit for the Looser-Flake Foundation, which was started through a generous $6 million gift from Dorothy Looser-Flake and Roberta Looser to support Mercer County upon their passing. The two sisters were born and raised on a family farm near New Boston Township, Illinois. Dorothy was a fifth grade teacher in the Rock Island-Milan School District, and Roberta taught in both Mercer County and the Rock Island–Milan School District. The women were committed to furthering educational opportunities for students in the region.
Several of the students who have entered the program grew up in small towns and have a passion for teaching in rural communities. That passion will go a long way as they earn their teaching degrees before heading to rural schools in one of the 22 Illinois counties the program serves. Students in the program receive $2,000 a year in scholarship assistance in the Pre-Teacher Education Program and $4,000 a year once accepted into the Teacher Education Program.
Students also sign a contract agreeing to work in one of the designated rural districts in Illinois for three years following graduation. Almost 60 percent of school districts in Illinois are in rural.
The teaching corps is gaining traction. It started with three students in the fall of 2018 and will have nearly a dozen students this fall.
The university is proud to be part of the solution for the state’s dwindling teacher pool. A larger statewide initiative to hire more teachers for Illinois schools has kicked off, backed by research that estimates between 20,000 to 24,000 new educators will be needed in Illinois in the next decade.
Students in the teaching corps will be more than prepared to teach in rural communities upon graduation.
The program provides students with speakers, training, and projects specific to the needs and best practices for teaching students in rural communities.