S.F. Unified Relying on Homegrown Teachers and Interns to Fill Void September 2015

San Francisco public school leaders desperately want and need people like 22-year-old Tina Yang.

She was born and raised in the city, and knew she wanted to be a teacher when she was 5 years old.

“When I first went to kindergarten here, I didn’t speak English,” Yang recalls. “But my teacher, she worked with me for that year and I did learn English in such a short amount of time.”

Fast forward to this year.

Yang just graduated with a degree in education from San Jose State University.

The San Francisco Unified School District quickly snatched her up for its teacher residency program, designed to get former students into the teaching profession.

It’s one of several unconventional ways the district is trying to build its own pipeline of homegrown teachers in the midst of a national teacher shortage.

“It’s just a really good model,” says SFUSD Superintendent Richard Carranza. “The reality is we will never be able to fill all of our vacancies through any one program.”

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