Initiative is home-growing teachers, with hopes that K-12 students will go back to school – their school – as educators
Photos by Ralph Freso
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was originally published in the November issue of GCU Magazine, available in the purple bins on campus or digitally.
They want to be teachers.
It’s not easy to become a teacher.
There is paying for college tuition, for one thing, and there is learning the skills for all that is required in schools, which are chronically short of teachers.
So when Jackson Blizzard learned during a high school field trip that he was among the first group of 13 recipients for the new RISE 360 Scholarship at Grand Canyon University, he hung up his mobile phone and announced it to everyone.
“The whole bus exploded with screams,” he said. “People were drumming on the windows.”
Lydia Gerald also wants to become a teacher, but the only thing she could afford was some online courses at a community college. Her parents had decided they would all move back to Texas, had put the home up for sale, “our boxes were packed, everything was set,” Gerald said.
Then she got the scholarship call.
“My mom cried, and my dad cried. It’s a really big thing. I am first generation. No one in my family has ever gone to college – my grandparents barely finished high school, my dad enlisted and mom had to take care of her family and work,” she said.
“At the last minute, we took the house off the market, unpacked and ended up staying here. I kept my boxes packed and moved them on campus.”
The impact on families is immediate, as it will be on the high schools the scholars attended.
Part of RISE 360 is that Blizzard and Gerald may return to their schools to student teach and then take over their own classroom as full-time teachers.
“This is really a natural way to go back and help the people that helped them, which I love,” said College of Education Dean Dr. Meredith Critchfield.
The idea for RISE 360 came from GCU education advisory board meetings, when superintendents and principals often discuss teacher shortages. The latest Arizona School Administrators Personnel Association survey in September showed 25% of teacher vacancies were unfilled at the beginning of the 2025-26 school year.
GCU, already one of the nation’s largest producers of graduates in education, had the idea of working with K-12 partners and school districts to identify students who want to be teachers – as early as junior high – and offer mentorship, dual-enrollment courses and “they begin to see the path, it’s crystalized for them,” Critchfield said. A GCU scholarship follows with a fast-track schedule, if possible, to return in two to 2 ½ years as student teachers and eventually classroom teachers in the district.
“They are rebuilding those touch points and also starting to take off the hat of a high school student and put on the hat of a teacher at that high school,” said Critchfield, who herself returned to her high school as a coach after college. “It’s this beautiful, symbiotic back and forth you just don’t typically see, sort of like a handoff in educator preparation.”
The first partners in RISE 360 are Buckeye Union High School District, Scottsdale Unified School District and Phoenix Union High School District in Arizona, though more are expected in the future.
The scholarship winners are now college freshmen and were introduced at the college’s kickoff in September, when Critchfield told them to live out their faith at GCU.
“When you choose this profession, you are choosing a sacred vocation that lives out that faith every single day,” she said. “You’re here to go into schools and change the lives of students, of families and communities. So thank you for that.”
Gerald already was feeling the pressure. Her younger brother was excited to move back to his friends in Texas, and her older sister was on board to go as well. Then they stayed for Gerald, and lives already were changing.
“We even had to buy a new bed frame because everything was sold. So it really has been a big sense of pressure,” she said. “But I’m really grateful for it. It’s a blessing, and I’m glad to get to do what I feel like God is telling me to do.”
She hopes to return to her school, Estrella Foothills High School in Goodyear, Arizona, and teach biology after her GCU education.
“I always loved working with kids,” she said.
When the student is in high school, the mentorship and coursework will be an extended version of what some high schools offer with career and technical education, Critchfield said, followed by a GCU education that goes beyond book knowledge to learning how to become a professional in the field.
“We’re excited for it because it’s proof in the pudding of what can happen when higher education works with the K-12 system,” she said.
It also helps K-12 schools.
“We need teachers,” said Youngker High School Principal Mike Sivertson, who added that it’s “super competitive” to land qualified teachers, even for campuses with a great environment for educators, like his school in Buckeye, Arizona.
This is one way to help keep the talent right at home.
He said he is biased, earning a doctorate at GCU and working closely with its Canyon Center for Character Education, “but I value what the school brings, and I think it’s a great place for students to come and grow in so many ways and eventually launch their professional careers.”
Blizzard, a 2025 graduate, had been told by Youngker’s early childhood education teacher, Cassie Kinney, that he would make a marvelous teacher.
So Blizzard, the son of an Amazon driver and car window repairman, worked in the Youngker COOP Childcare Center, which gives on-the-job training to high school students. He studied hard to earn a scholarship.
“We need more men in education,” Kinney said. “I think he is looking forward to being every student’s favorite teacher.”
Blizzard said he can pick up material fast and knows how to work with people. He just needed a chance.
“This scholarship gave me the opportunity to do what I wanted,” he said. “I had a couple of teachers who gave me the idea I could do it, that this would be the best way for me to make a difference.”
So when he unloaded from the boisterous bus that day, there was one place he headed first.
“I heard them coming from a long way away,” Kinney said. “They wanted to share it with me. They came running down the hallway, yelling and screaming and so exuberant.”
GCU News senior writer Mike Kilen can be reached at [email protected].
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