Aleccia Broughton knows firsthand how important it is to have a teacher who recognizes when a young student is struggling.

“I encountered a system that failed to address my learning deficits and social-emotional needs,” Broughton said of her own time in school. A teacher did eventually address those deficits, allowing her to excel academically.

The experience inspired her to pursue opportunities to work with struggling students. She currently teaches special education in Barbour County through a temporary certification program that allows her to work in a classroom while she takes courses to earn a full certificate.

More emergency certified teachers are working in Alabama classrooms, as fewer teachers graduate from college programs and the state struggles to staff schools. Nationally, about 44% of first-time teachers will leave their first job within five years of employment. In Alabama, that rate is a little higher: About half of new teachers end up leaving their first job after three years.

This fall, Alabama education leaders piloted a training program for recently-hired, emergency-certified teachers, in an effort to give them community, develop important skills and, hopefully, encourage them to stick with their school.

“I appreciated the opportunity to fellowship with professionals from other districts, content specialists, special education teachers, general educators and various staff, fostering collaboration and the exchange of challenges, successes, recommendations and critical resources,” Broughton said.

“The program equips educators with insights that seasoned teachers may not be aware of, fostering better preparation and adaptability in the dynamic field of education,” she added.

Assistant State Superintendent Melissa Shields said educators often leave after their first year of teaching because the job is so difficult. Problems can be compounded if an educator has no professional training.

So she helped create PREP – short for Preparing Relief Educators Program – in order to help teachers with little to no formal training get a better footing beginning with their first year. And with any luck, those new teachers will be in it for the long haul.

Before taking on a statewide role, Shields oversaw school improvement efforts in the Black Belt region, where many of the state’s underperforming schools are located.

Most of her school’s teachers were long-term substitutes or emergency-certified. Just three were certified.

At that point, it hit Shields that while Alabama expects teachers to implement high-yield, impactful instruction, there are a great number of teachers who don’t know what a lesson plan is. They learn how to lead classrooms, guide learning and tackle problems on the fly. Some Alabama students never have access to a fully-certificated math teacher.

“These people are in front of children every day, who deserve an accomplished teacher,” she said. “We don’t want to set these folks up for failure. We want to give them an opportunity, and if we play our cards right, to inspire them and put that fire in their belly to become certificated teachers.”

Shields wanted to focus on ways to help new teachers find their footing. She and Assistant State Superintendent Shanthia Washington pitched the program to State Superintendent Eric Mackey.

Then they consulted experts across the state to develop the training.

“We asked, ‘what are the big ticket things that a brand new person stepping in front of a group of students needs to know?’

Those topics include everything from writing lesson plans to classroom management to grading to discipline.

They invited teachers from districts with 20% or more of teachers using emergency certificates to participate. An AL.com analysis showed eight school districts met that criteria during the 2022-23 school year. Teachers in schools participating in the Governor’s Turnaround Initiative were also invited.

About 200 to 230 teachers, many first-time educators, ended up joining 12 weekly Zoom calls with Shields and other experts. The participants teach many subjects and live in all corners of the state.

Most all are teaching as a second career, after working as bartenders, bankers, dog groomers, hair stylists, military lawyers, paralegals, pastors, phlebotomists, restaurant managers and 911 dispatchers. (There were even a few former journalists participating.)

Shields and Washington – both of whom spent many years in the classroom before stepping into state-level leadership roles – led each weekly session from their offices in Montgomery, setting themes like crazy hat night or show-your-favorite-book night.

Each session was supposed to start at 7 p.m. sharp and last an hour, Shields said.

“That one hour became a little aspirational, because it never happened. We never ended a session before nine.”

PREP participants gave the training high praise.

Wilcox County high school social studies teacher Thomas Betts said the training has inspired him to pursue full certification. He’s served as a substitute teacher since 2015, he said, so he wasn’t completely new to the classroom.

Betts said hearing from experts but also seeing hundreds of others in the same position boosted his confidence.

“Training such as lesson plans, rubrics, certification tracks and many other valuable gems gave us the confidence that we don’t have to feel like we’re thrown to the wolves, but we have a very strong and available support system that believes in us.”

“I am a better teacher because of PREP training, and I am blessed to better serve my students with the confidence that I am giving them the best version of me each week.”

All of the presenters volunteered their time, Shields said, but participants were eligible to be paid $100 for each training, and if they attended all 12 sessions, they received a total of $1500.

That funding came from federal pandemic relief funding, which may run out before the 2024-25 school year starts, she said, but after such great feedback from participants, they’re trying to find funding for next year.

PREP sessions were recorded and posted on the state department’s Office for Student Learning YouTube page so that those who couldn’t attend would still have access to the material, Shields said.

The number of emergency-certificated teachers has grown exponentially since the state relaxed the rules in 2019. There were 426 teachers using emergency certificates during the 2016-17 school year compared to 2,800 during the 2022-23 school year, the most recent year for which data is publicly available.

Teachers using emergency certificates are allowed to teach up to four years in a classroom. If they haven’t completed the requirements by that time, they either become long-term substitutes – at lower pay, usually – or they leave the school.

Broughton said PREP training gave her the confidence she needed to keep going. “Full certification is now inevitable, thanks to the clarity provided by PREP,” she said.

That’s exactly the kind of outcome Shields said she hoped the training would produce.

“The whole mission of this is to create accomplished teachers who will stay.”

“If we do this right,” Shields said, “these people will stay.”