Westmont College and the Santa Barbara Unified School District are partnering on a new residency program to train the next generation of teachers.

Residents will be working in Santa Barbara classrooms three days a week and will receive a $33,000 stipend for their Westmont tuition or living expenses.

John Becchio, SBUSD’s assistant superintendent of human resources, said the goal of the program is to diversify their teaching staff and support local graduates who want to stay in the community. 

“About 75% of our certificated teacher workforce is white,” Becchio said, “and so we are looking to diversify that workforce, and we think that this program will help us do that.”

The program is funded by a $2.4 million grant from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, which will support 15 residents in the program each year for four years.

Residents will be working as a co-teacher in classrooms with veteran teachers at local elementary and junior high schools, Becchio said. 

“You’re actually on the job doing the work of a teacher for the entire year,” Becchio said. “Our hope is that they get immersed in teaching for that year as a student teacher, and will leave the program with experiences of what the day in and day out life of a teacher is.”

The partnership for the program came together after Sally Hawkins, assistant professor of education at Westmont, noticed the lack of teacher residency programs in the area after she moved to Santa Barbara last year.

She had previously worked on residency programs in Northern California for St. Mary’s College. 

“It makes it possible for people who wanted to be teachers but there have been barriers, pathway barriers, financial barriers, and this program has made it possible for them to become teachers, to achieve their dream of being a teacher,” Hawkins said. 

Hawkins said she’s also seen the program benefit students, who get to learn from teachers from their community. 

“It’s an investment in the school community at large,” Hawkins said. “It’s telling the students that, ‘We see you, you matter.’ They can see their own potential in the teachers that are role models for them and teach them.”

Program participants will be working at schools three days a week and taking Westmont classes in the late afternoon on methods of teaching, literacy, math instruction and other state-required courses. 

“I’m excited that they are going to get a very supportive and rigorous program that is going to prepare them to have a successful career in teaching,” Hawkins said. 

Anyone with a bachelor’s degree and an interest in teaching children can apply to the program by June 10 to be a part of the first cohort this fall.