Could former students help solve Louisiana's teacher shortage? New grads return to the classroom.

Ashira Jones perched on a blue chair only slightly above the heads of the five kindergarteners who sat cross-legged on a rainbow carpet, rapt as she pointed to spelling words.

“What sound does Monday start with,” she asked the students at KIPP Central City Primary in New Orleans. “Mmm,” they responded in unison before drawing the letter M in the air with their fingers.

“Very good, now kiss your brains,” Jones told the students, who touched their hands to their lips and pressed them to their heads.

Jones is no ordinary first-year teacher.

She first got her taste of teaching as a high school student at KIPP, one of the city’s largest charter-school operators, through a program meant to recruit students into the teaching profession. Four years later, after graduating from Dillard University, she is starting her career in education— one of the first two participants in the program to go from KIPP student to teacher.

KIPP’s Alumni Teaching Force program is part of the organization’s long-term solution to addressing the teacher shortage, a recruitment challenge exacerbated by the pandemic. This year, nine New Orleans high schools have enrolled 135 students in “grow your own” teacher programs like KIPP’s, which give high schoolers teaching experience and a guaranteed job after college.

Many schools view such programs, which are spreading nationally, as a way to create a pipeline of future educators who can relate to their students and are less likely to quit.

“We are breeding local talent right in our own backyard that is deeply rooted in our community and in our schools and our students,” said Jahquille Ross, chief of talent for New Schools for New Orleans, an education nonprofit. “This is worth investing in.”

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