Grand Canyon University was praised at the Arizona State Board of Education’s December meeting, when the board’s biennial report on Arizona education preparation institutions showed that GCU had the highest percentage of its alumni still teaching after five years (78%).
Teacher shortages and vacancies have long been a concern in Arizona and nationwide, and after GCU’s showing, its representatives were asked to share the University’s methods at its Jan. 22 board meeting.
“Whatever Grand Canyon University is doing, it is obviously pretty remarkable,” said board member Jennifer Clark at the meeting.
The report also showed that GCU and Pima Community College were tops with just more than 51% of its alumni still teaching after 10 years among institutions with 10 or more certified graduates.
“While there are different ways to measure teacher retention and many fantastic educator prep programs in Arizona, it's encouraging to see teachers who graduated from GCU continuing in the profession in such high numbers after five years,” Clark said in a recent statement.
COE Assistant Dean Dr. Lindy Gaudiano, Assistant Vice President of K12 Outreach and Education Program Development Dr. Carol Lippert and Assistant Vice President of K12 Educational Development Dr. Cherryl Paul will share with the board the ways GCU has helped to fill classrooms with teachers who thrive and stay in the field.
“Not only is there a shortage of certified teachers, but there is a vacancy of teachers who are certified but have left the profession,” Gaudiano said. “The foundation of support we provide for teachers joining the education profession is important work, and it’s something we have refined through the years. GCU started as a teacher’s college and we really have found what works to help produce competent and effective teachers.”
Gaudiano said it starts from the first year of the student’s journey with support from University counselors helping students find their way through COE’s robust menu of 50 academic programs.
Students take a pledge to well represent themselves and the college before being guided through courses, classroom field experience and support for licensure testing.
But a key piece to retention once they graduate is the GCU Promise, COE’s commitment to support the educator with questions on teaching practices, resources, guidance from professors or simply validation.
It’s one of the reasons GCU alumna Quinn Fullerton is in her fifth year of teaching at Sunnyslope Elementary School in Phoenix.
“It is great to be able to have contact with professors who taught me five years ago, but I have the ability to ask them more or go in depth on it,” said the third-grade teacher. “That is a huge part of being successful, feeling like you have a team behind you, and you are not alone out there.”
The profession faces severe shortages in Arizona. The Arizona School Personal Administrators Association’s survey of 130 school districts this fall found that nearly a third of teaching positions remained unfilled.
Fullerton also found herself contemplating quitting after the first year.
“Once it’s 8 a.m., the bell rings and you close the door, you have 26 kids in your room, and it’s all on you. It’s just a lot of pressure. For me, it was extremely overwhelming, constantly feeling like there was more to do, more to learn, and I felt stuck constantly. I felt like a failure. My kids test scores weren’t very good,” she said.
But Fullerton found support through assistant professor Katy Long and fellowship among other GCU graduates at her school.
“It creates an accountability. If someone is constantly checking on you, ‘Hey how is this year going? What is something I could help you out with? Is there something you can help me out with?’ It just boosts your confidence and allows you to know people are on your side,” she said. “That’s how it impacts retention. I think people who leave just don’t feel supported.”
Amanda Wild felt supported after her 2019 graduation from GCU, when COE Dean Dr. Meredith Critchfield visited her first-grade classroom at Sunnyslope.
“During my first year of teaching, Dr. Critchfield asked to come to my classroom and used that time to encourage me in the practices she saw and plant seeds in different directions I could go in the field of education outside of the classroom,” Wild said.
Wild heard Critchfield’s thoughts on avenues such as instructional coaching and school counseling, another area of need, and eventually got her master’s degree in school counseling at GCU, and today is a school counselor at Sunset Ridge School in Deer Valley.
What also kept her engaged in education was coming from a Christian university. “It is comforting to be out in the workforce knowing that there are fellow GCU grads who share similar values as I do as I have moved on in my career,” she said.
GCU’s Christian-infused academic journey gives them, among other things, a sense of purpose and an ethical and moral framework in their roles, which is also supported by GCU’s Canyon Center for Character Education.
“So many of our students already have that internal calling to be an educator,” Gaudiano said. “We provide a foundation of that ethical and moral space for our students to learn to be educators, and that is something they take in their own classroom and can replicate that atmosphere for their students.”
Support and guidance from the wide range of Valley educators on the COE advisory board also helps them stay connected and encouraged.
“When we read and hear about the statistics across the nation, its different than what we encounter with some of our recent grads who just seem so hopeful in the field of education,” Gaudiano said.
Because of their extensive field experience, GCU students are often employed before they even graduate. Then they can get further support after graduation through the K12 Educational Developmment and Canyon Professional Development’s teams that provide additional training and webinars.
The GCU contingent will share with the board GCU’s innovative pathways that also assist to ease teacher shortages, including one for emergency substitutes and another for paraprofessionals who can study to become teachers while working.
It all adds up to numbers that make a difference in Arizona classrooms, according to the report: GCU not only had the most certified graduates in the last three years, including 4,592 in 2023, but they are more likely to stay in the classroom for years to come.
Grand Canyon University senior writer Mike Kilen can be reached at [email protected]
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