The St. Vrain Valley School District is using its K-8 summer school program, Project Launch, as a training opportunity for future teachers.

High school students in the district’s P-TEACH program, along with recent graduates, can work as para-educators and tutors in the summer program, giving them extra classroom experience — plus a summer paycheck.

“We want to give them as much experience as possible,” said Jenny Rhoadarmer, a St. Vrain high impact tutoring success coach who supports the P-TEACH students.

P-TEACH, which St. Vrain started in spring 2018, is a concurrent enrollment program that combines field experiences in classrooms with college-level early childhood classes, allowing students to earn up to 31 college credits while still in high school. Students can explore early childhood, special education, elementary education, English language development and secondary STEM pathways.

District officials said they’ve expanded course offerings in partnership with the University of Colorado Denver to include general education classes such as Universal Design for Learning, as well as education technology electives such as Digital Teaching and Learning. Several high schools also offer a student assistant program. At those schools, juniors and seniors can work as peer tutors while completing a CU Denver field experience course for college credit.In May, 55 St. Vrain high school seniors graduated after completing the P-TEACH program, including four students who earned more than 30 college credits before graduating high school. Of those 55 graduates, about 20 plan to pursue an education degree.

After graduation, the students can continue with a college apprenticeship program that provides more St. Vrain classroom experience while working toward a teaching degree. Para-educators who want to earn an education bachelor’s degree also can participate through a program first piloted in the 2023-24 school year.

Project Launch jobs are open to all three groups. This summer, about 50 P-TEACH participants worked at nine Project Launch sites. Their pay was covered mainly by a state High-Impact Tutoring Program grant, which sunsets this month and wasn’t funded for the next school year.

Ashley Rodriguez, who is just starting to explore teaching, is enrolling in P-TEACH classes in the fall as a sophomore at Longmont’s Skyline High School. As a former Timberline PK-8 student, she said, she liked the idea of working in a classroom over the summer at her previous school. In the mornings, she helped run a first grade math group, while in the afternoons she helped students with literacy.

“It sounded like a good idea,” she said. “Why not do something I like and get paid for it?”

Giovanni Basile, a Lyons High graduate, is working at Timberline as a high impact math tutor both during the school year and in the summer while taking classes through Front Range Community College.

“P-TEACH was a really good opportunity to see if I wanted to be a teacher and get experience,” he said.

His first classroom experience was with second graders, leading him to decide early elementary education wasn’t his first choice. Now, as a middle school tutor, he’s found the older students are a better fit.

“I’ve loved it,” he said. “Middle school is a chaotic time. To see them grow and change and develop, this is the age group for me.”

Working in a classroom allows him to put the education theory he’s learning into practice, he said. All that classroom experiences also will make him a better, more prepared teacher, he said, especially if he lands a job in the district.

“I’ll have years of school teaching experiences,” he said. “I get to plan and teach my own lessons. I get to see all the ins and outs of how a school runs. You get to see what being a teacher would be like in St. Vrain.”

Melanie Victoria is a media tech at Timberline who is taking elementary education classes at CU Denver. For Project Launch, she’s in charge of her own classroom as a lead teacher.

“They have mentoring, and they guide you,” she said. “It’s been a great support system. It’s giving me experience. I get to lesson plan and decide the activities we do. I’ve seen a lot of growth from my students.”

As the first in her family to go to college, she said, her interest in teaching came from her own positive school experiences.

“I loved my teachers growing up,” she said. “I loved going to school. It was my happy place. I want to give my students that same support system I had when I was younger.”