Elevate K-12 Partners with University of Phoenix to Combat the Teacher-Shortage Crisis
The live-stream high-quality instruction brand will provide online student teaching opportunities to University of Phoenix students who are struggling to secure observation hours and experience amid COVID-19.
CHICAGO, Feb. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Live-streaming instruction brand Elevate K-12 bridges the gap between the best teachers and the schools that need them most by allowing educators to teach engaging, live classes from anywhere in the world. In alignment with its mission to combat the nation's teacher shortage amid COVID-19, Elevate K-12 is partnering with University of Phoenix to provide online student-teaching opportunities for student teachers that the university places each semester across the country.
"We reached out to University of Phoenix looking for ways that we could work together to help student teachers," said Elevate K-12 chief operating officer Kim Kross. "On average, the University of Phoenix places around 800 student teachers per semester, and in addition they have thousands more who are earning their undergraduate and master degree in education. The requirements for achieving those degrees is to complete a number of observation hours and to accumulate hours of student teaching. With COVID-19, that has been increasingly difficult, and schools don't know how to accommodate that in a remote environment. That is where we come in."
Elevate K-12 will streamline that process by connecting student teachers to the country's most highly qualified educators through the brand's Elevate Live® Technology. Elevate Live® transforms traditional classrooms into cutting-edge, live-stream instruction classrooms, providing teachers with all the tools they need to conduct vibrant and impactful lessons and engage directly and personally with students.
"We are piloting a program with University of Phoenix student teachers through our virtual classrooms," said Kross. "Through this partnership, University of Phoenix students who want to pursue online education opportunities have a track. For students who want to finish up their student teaching requirements but don't want to go into the classroom, we can leverage our system and network of qualified teachers."
"The University of Phoenix College of Education is thrilled to partner with Elevate K-12," said Pamela Roggeman, Ed.D., Dean of the University of Phoenix College of Education. "Elevate K-12 has found an innovative way to address the teacher shortage across the nation by placing virtual, certified educators into hard to staff classrooms across the United States, and our teacher candidates want to be a part of this innovation that is improving local school communities!"
As a participant in this program, the school partner will have a mentor teacher from Elevate K-12 assigned to their program. That is the highest designation of educator that Elevate K-12 has in its system and is reserved for the top 10% of the teaching pool. Through the University of Phoenix partnership, the student teacher will be assigned to the Elevate K-12 program for a 12-week student teaching assignment for four hours per day. For the first six weeks of the program, they will be observing Elevate K-12's mentor teacher in action to learn from them, to get to know the students and understand the online teaching environment. During the second six weeks, the student teacher will take over the teaching and will be observed and coached by the mentor teacher, who will be in the classroom the entire time that the student teacher is teaching. The mentor teacher will be giving daily input and guidance to the student teacher.
"During those 12 weeks, the school is in essence receiving the best teacher we have along with a second teacher in the classroom at no additional cost," said Kross. "In addition, Elevate K-12 is working with University of Phoenix to provide opportunities for classroom observations to help student teachers fulfill their clinical hours, which can be very difficult in the current COVID environment. Elevate K-12 will provide student teachers with classroom videos so that they can analyze the methodology and see what great teaching looks like without having to be in the actual classroom."
As America's teacher shortage reaches crisis levels, Elevate K-12 and the University of Phoenix will also be working together to offer a solution for schools that are suffering from a lack of talented, passionate and certified teachers.
"We are doing our part to help with the teacher shortage across the United States by partnering with University of Phoenix's career fairs in which our brand will be highlighted for graduating teachers who may be looking for virtual teaching opportunities," said Kross. "Teaching needs to be a vocation of choice for the younger generation, and we are doing everything we can to make sure that the teacher pipeline is full of qualified educators."
Kross concluded, "The University of Phoenix is passionate about furthering education by helping future teachers find the careers they desire, and our goal at Elevate K-12 is to make education better in ways that benefit the students, schools, parents and educators themselves. For us, being able to partner with an institution like the University of Phoenix is an amazing first step in making sure we have talented educators for generations to come."
About Elevate K-12
Elevate K-12 is a Chicago-based instruction-technology company that brings high-quality live streaming instruction into K-12 classrooms. Schools and districts partner with Elevate K-12's unique instructional solution to solve their teacher shortage challenges, overuse of long-term substitutes or low-quality teachers. Its tech-enabled service comprises Proprietary Live Instructional Management Technology, Live Instruction Service, Curriculum and Classroom Management to provide the necessary tools for collaborative teaching and learning that emulates the experience of a real, physical classroom. Elevate K-12 currently operates in 11 states and is rapidly expanding to new states across the U.S. in K-12 schools. For more information, visit http://www.elevatek12.com and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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SOURCE Elevate K-12
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