Mobile County Using Students To Teach

The Mobile County Public School System recently established a program intended to combat its teacher shortage, WKRG reports. Twelve student teachers from the University of South Alabama are being paid to host kindergarten through sixth-grade virtual classrooms, while being overseen by a certified teacher. Rena Phillips, MCPSS director of communications, said, “They have been identified by South and also at the schools that they worked at last year to be rising stars and people that we want to hire full-time, so we are looking forward to having them in our classrooms with our students virtually.” The program follows a poll of parents’ interest in children returning to school in person or virtually (BBN #52), which confirmed the need for a virtual option. “The virtual school is a student-paced program, and so they get their lessons online, but we have to make sure they are staying on track and make sure they are doing what they are supposed to be doing and then [provide] extra intervention, tutoring and support to those students,” Phillips added.