Greenville County Schools expands innovative teacher-recruiting program

Greenville County Schools is expanding a successful teacher-recruitment program.

The Greenville Alternative Teacher Education program will now be available for those wishing to teach visual or performing arts.

The program offers an innovative pathway to becoming a teacher while helping the school system fill open positions. GCS recently announced it will expand GATE to add teacher certifications in elementary music, art, drama, dance, band and orchestra for the 2024-25 school year.

“We were just noticing that sometimes those fine arts positions are getting harder and harder to fill,” said Candice Moore, the program’s coordinator. “We decided to open this up as a pathway to hopefully help with this hiring needs.”

Program participants make a three-year teaching commitment with GCS while they complete their certification. To be enrolled in the program, candidates must have a bachelor’s degree in a specific teaching field, a minimum 2.5 cumulative GPA and a passing score on the Praxis specialty area content examination.

GATE teachers attend cohort seminars, learning labs, summer institutes and more while completing the program. They also receive one-on-one support from coaches who help them grow in their teaching practices.

Moore explained the program has experienced “astronomical growth” since the first cohort began in 2016.

“We had 10 participants (in 2016). Of course, we only offered math and science certification at that time,” she said. “With our most recent cohort, we had 99 participants and we have math, science, English, social studies, business, world languages, special education, elementary and early childhood.”

Applications are now open for GATE’s 2024-25 school year cohort. For more information, visit greenville.k12.sc.us/Employment/main.asp?titleid=gate_schedule.

Filling positions

Candice Moore, the program’s coordinator, said the program’s participants make up around 25% of the school system’s induction classes. This means a quarter of first-year teachers hired by GCS are GATE teachers.