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Yehiri Gonzalez first heard about a new program to shepherd Chicago students into teaching careers at the height of the pandemic. After receiving an email from the school district, the then-high school senior and her friends debated whether the program could be real.
Gonzalez was intrigued.
The daughter of Mexican immigrants, she had spoken little English in the early grades and struggled to keep up, at one point leaning on a tutor who came to the shelter where she had stayed for a time. She credits growing as a student and getting into the highly selective Lane Tech College Prep High School to finding peers and educators who shared and understood her background. She wanted to offer that support to other students.
As it turned out, the program, known as Teach Chicago Tomorrow, was no scam. It was a new district partnership with City Colleges of Chicago and Illinois State University that offered students financial assistance, academic guidance, and eventually, priority for CPS teaching jobs.
Gonzalez became one of 20 students in the program’s first cohort in 2021. She was one of five to graduate with an education degree in four years and begin teaching this fall. Another five are still on track to graduate in the next couple of years.
In total, 246 students have enrolled in the program, including a record 102 who started this fall. The district’s goal is triple the number of CPS grads it hires to teach each year, from about 140 to more than 500.
After graduating from Illinois State University and student-teaching at Talcott Elementary on Chicago’s Northwest Side, Gonzalez returned to the school in August as a sixth grade teacher in its dual language program. She spoke with Chalkbeat about being an English learner in CPS, making it through Teach Chicago Tomorrow, and learning to lead her own classroom over the past month.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What stands out the most about your experience as a student in Chicago Public Schools?
What stands out is the experience of being an English language learner. It can be hard to accept the fact that you’re an English learner if you are born and raised here. That was a big part of growing up for me, and I know that many of my classmates had that similar experience of feeling like a weird English language learner. I do belong in this program because I don’t speak English, but then I don’t belong, because why don’t I know English? Obviously, I do not think that anymore.
When I was a child, I really loved being in a bilingual program. I was in the program up until third grade, and I had a really good sense of community and belonging even though I was transferring constantly. Especially if the teachers looked like me and spoke the same language as me, I felt an even greater, more authentic connection.
Do you have a memory that captures just how challenging it was to be an English learner at the time?
When I was in fourth grade, I got put into a monolingual English program. All my classmates spoke English. My teacher only spoke English. I had a really challenging time, especially because the school community did not look like me, and I felt like I didn’t belong there. How do I connect with these people? How can I create a friendship? How can I learn in this environment? Because of that language barrier, I didn’t understand what I was doing most of the time. I remember getting straight Fs that year.
You were learning English and also for a time living in a shelter. How did you navigate that?
At the shelter, we were learning English for a bit. It was a little bit more basic, and it was whenever we had the chance to do it, because sometimes the hours and the timing were difficult for me. But there was some support there, and sometimes they had things like homework help. But when I was in fourth grade, I was not living in the shelter anymore, so that actually made it more difficult to get any support outside of school.
How did you eventually find your stride as a student and your way into Lane Tech, one of the most selective high schools in CPS?
In fifth grade, I got put into a different school. It was also monolingual English, but I felt more connected because there were more people who looked like me and spoke my language, and I didn’t feel ashamed of speaking Spanish. I felt more comfortable trying to speak and write English. In fifth grade and sixth grade, I had already adapted to English, so that I was helping the newcomers who had just arrived. I was translating all the work to Spanish for them.
As a person who’s first generation and the oldest in my family, I didn’t know what selective enrollment was at all. In eighth grade, there was a mentor from the nonprofit City Year. Her name was Colleen. She said, “You have really good grades, and there are different types of high schools that you can go to.” She walked me through the process. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t think I would have been successful in getting into Lane or even trying to apply.
When did you first start thinking about becoming a teacher and why?
It was something that I always had in the back of my mind. I’m the oldest of four, so I was always helping my siblings with school. In middle school, I would help the newcomers translate their work. When I was in high school and we had service learning hours, I would volunteer at the local park and help fundraise money for kids so that they would have access to programming. So I found myself going into education because I really wanted to help and let students have that authentic connection and someone who represents them in their classroom.
How did you find your way into the Teach Chicago Tomorrow program?
My friends who are in the program and I always joke about this. It was COVID, the winter of 2020-2021. Everyone is trying to figure out where you’re going in the middle of a pandemic. All of a sudden, we get this email from CPS that says, “Do you want to be a teacher? Join a Q & A session for the Teach Chicago Tomorrow initiative.” And we’re like, “This sounds too good to be true.”
I remember speaking with my counselor at Lane, and she said, “It’s a new program. That’s why no one has heard of it, but you should definitely apply. I think you would be a good fit for it.” I got in, and I met other people who had that same mentality as me, who were products of CPS, who wanted to teach at CPS, and who were bilingual and first generation. We were really able to connect and learn from each other. And all of us are educators today, teaching in CPS.
How much academic, financial, and other support did you get through the program?
My first two years, I went to community college at Truman virtually. I was able to have support from a program partnered with Teach Chicago Tomorrow called Supporting Emerging Educator Development. They explained, “This is what community college looks like. These are the classes that you need to take to successfully connect to Illinois State University.”
They helped us get access to mental health resources. We were also able to get academic help through One Million Degrees (a nonprofit that provides academic, personal, and other support to City Colleges students). We had access to staff who were able to support us through our transition to Illinois State. Every single credit that I took at Truman went into my Illinois State degree so I was able to finish my bachelor’s in four years.
The district says that the program is set up so ideally, students can complete it without paying any tuition or fees. Is that how it played out in your case?
Through CPS, I connected to Lincoln Park Zoo, and I interned there. Then they hired me as a part-time educator. I worked at the zoo for three years, and then because of Teach Chicago Tomorrow, we were offered positions in the CPS Tutor Corps initiative that started in 2021.
They also have some scholarships, but it really depends. You get a scholarship your first two years of community college, but when you transfer out, you don’t have that scholarship anymore. I’m a Golden Apple scholar as well, so that’s how I paid for school.
This fall you are teaching sixth grade at Talcott. What have these first weeks of leading your own classroom been like?
It’s been a lot of trial and error. How do we make sure that students give their input and their value? For example, when I graded their math classwork, instead of just giving them a grade, I asked them, “What does it look like to get an A in this classroom?” Co-creating those norms and expectations together helps them see, “I know that I can do this because we came up with it together and have that mutual agreement.”
They are taking initiative in their own learning and becoming more independent. Thankfully, I have the students that I student-taught last year. So I’m able to better support them and pick up off where I left off last year.
Do you feel that during this first month, you’ve learned something about teaching that you can’t necessarily pick up taking classes or even student-teaching?
I feel like a lot of it is making decisions on the spot. You learn a little bit about that during your student-teaching, but you still have support from someone else. Being by yourself and having to do everything on your own, it’s a lot of, “Wow, I have to really make this decision quickly, and what’s the best decision?”
Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.
