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"Grow Our Own" Talent Pipeline Launched By GRPS & Ferris State

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Grand Rapids Public Schools along with Ferris State University have launched a new High School Academy.  It’s the academy for teaching and learning at Innovation Central High School.  The goal is to create a talent pipeline from K12 to higher education… then back to GRPS.

“Teresa has been so willing to let people imagine and then help people partner and I’m so happy that Ferris is on board.”

Ferris State University and Grand Rapids Public schools are partnering with the launch of a new High School Academy of Teaching and Learning.  It will be housed at Innovation Central High School.  The idea is create a talent pipeline from K12 to higher education and then back to GRPS; while also addressing diversity in the Education profession.  Here’s Dr. Anthony Baker: Director of Community Engagement at Ferris as well as a longtime GRPS School Board Member.  It’s referred to as a “Grow Our Own” talent pipeline.

“The fact is that there are not enough black and latino graduates of teacher programs, so growing our own, makes the most sense.  So, Central High school has a large number of black and latino students  that are growing other industries in diversity and so it makes the most sense that we’re growing our own teachers.”

Students participating in the Academy of Teaching and  Learning will explore and prepare for a career in education through mentoring with master teachers, dual enrollment and professional preparation in the field. 

“So when they get to Ferris they’ll have a semester of work out of the way, they’ll be automatically accepted if they’ve successfully completed the program at Central; They will then be working with GRPS as their Ferris Students and doing their field work, and then when they graduate from Ferris they’ll be able to come back to GRPS to teach.”

The program begins next fall. 

Jennifer is an award winning broadcast news journalist with more than two decades of professional television news experience including the nation's fifth largest news market. She's worked as both news reporter and news anchor for television and radio in markets from Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo all the way to San Francisco, California.