Two years after Colorado lawmakers adopted an apprenticeship program designed to train promising teachers without the time or means to attend a traditional college program, dozens of up-and-coming educators have pursued an apprenticeship in hopes of having their own classroom one day.
Nearly 60 teacher apprentices across nine districts enrolled in the first class of the state’s new Teacher Degree Apprenticeship Program during the last school year, with about 45 more set to begin their apprenticeship in seven districts this fall during the program’s second year. Most of them have backgrounds as paraprofessionals, working under teachers to tend to the learning needs of individual students and small groups. Others have found their way to an apprenticeship after manning school security, staffing front offices and long-term substitute teaching.
While 100 teachers in training won’t solve Colorado’s chronic teacher shortages — districts have struggled to fill thousands of teaching positions in recent years — the architects of the apprenticeship program say the early interest is a surefire sign that teacher apprenticeships have the potential to bulk up the state’s educator workforce over time and draw more teachers to classrooms who are likely to stay.
That’s especially true as other avenues to becoming a certified teacher in Colorado are hitting roadblocks or dead ends. Earlier this year, the Trump administration halted hundreds of millions of dollars designated for federal teacher training grants, including a $6.5 million grant the University of Colorado Denver used to help prepare and plant more teachers in rural schools.
“I haven’t seen many solutions that can serve anyone, any young person,” said Noel Ginsburg, founder and CEO of CareerWise Colorado, part of a national nonprofit connecting students and employers for work-based learning programs across industries. “This one does, and for those young people that don’t have the access or opportunity, (an) apprenticeship can do that. This is more than just a program. We’re looking to change how we deliver education in this country.”
When it comes to teacher apprenticeships, that means broadening Colorado’s pool of prospective teachers and better equipping them with skills they’ll need to command their classroom once they secure their license.
The newer model, which lawmakers embraced upon passing Senate Bill 87 in 2023, breaks from the two approaches Colorado has long used to prime teachers, both of which have largely excluded a wide base of would-be teachers. Traditional educator preparation programs in the state route students through a university program that is heavy on coursework before thrusting students into a classroom for an often unpaid semester or year of student teaching. Graduates earn both a bachelor’s degree and a teacher’s license.
A screenshot of P. Gideon Daniel’s online coursework for part of his degree program to become a certified teacher. Daniel is working toward becoming a teacher through a new degree apprenticeship program that blends online college coursework with on-the-job classroom training. (Brian Malone, Special to The Colorado Sun)Alternative licensure programs steer professionals who have already completed a bachelor’s degree in a specific content area into teaching, plopping them into a classroom where they figure out how to teach as they go. Teachers in alternative programs learn the mechanics of teaching both by taking classes through a higher education institution or a school district and by coteaching with another educator or by working as “a teacher of record” and instructing students while under close observation.
Teacher apprenticeships have surfaced as an option for adults who may have never taken a single college class or who hold an associate’s degree and who want to teach but can’t afford to stop working in order to go back to school full time in pursuit of a bachelor’s degree and teacher’s license. The program, which generally takes up to four years to complete, depending on how many college credits and classroom experience an apprentice has already racked up, pairs college classes with on-the-job training.
But instead of student teaching for only a semester or two, like teacher candidates in a traditional program, teacher apprentices work for a district every year of their training under authorization from the state education department. They learn on the job, applying lessons from their classes while also continuing to earn an income and benefits and inching toward the day they take over a classroom during the final year of their apprenticeship.
“It just creates so much opportunity for people who didn’t think they could go to college because they have to work the whole time,” said Liz Qualman, director of teacher education at Colorado Mountain College, the first higher education partner approved by the Colorado Department of Education to support apprentices in meeting the academic requirements of their degree and license. At least four other Colorado higher education institutions are in the approval process.
Colorado Mountain College reconfigured coursework and academic calendars to fit the schedules of teacher apprentices, who are often juggling family responsibilities on top of a full-time job. Apprentices take classes one day a week, some of which they tackle on their own and some of which they do virtually at assigned times with a professor and other apprentices, Qualman said. They typically take two courses over an eight-week period. And while apprentices must pay tuition, it costs them less than most educator preparation programs.
Each course is framed around classroom experience, challenging apprentices to find ways to practice the skills they cover in classes with the students they work with every day. They are supervised by a more seasoned teacher, who mentors them. They also are coached by a college field supervisor who regularly observes them in their classroom.
“That is transformational,” said Ginsburg, of CareerWise Colorado, which helps districts register teacher apprentices with the U.S. Department of Labor and ensures they comply with the federal agency’s policies. “If you’re a learner like me, I couldn’t sit in a classroom very effectively so I worked and from that work, though, school started to make sense. So making those things credit-bearing all of a sudden makes it more affordable in rural parts of our state.”
“We’re not changing the bar”
Teacher apprenticeships have gained traction as an increasingly reliable way to counteract teacher shortages across states, with close to half of all states experimenting with the model as of last year, K-12 Dive reported. The number of teacher apprentices across states jumped more than tenfold between 2022 and 2025, from 356 to 3,884 apprentices.
Besides ramping up Colorado’s teacher pipeline, the apprenticeship model has also helped the state begin to chip away at another longtime problem in the workforce: a lack of diversity, with white women overwhelmingly representing the majority of teachers in Colorado schools.
Apprentices in the inaugural cohort range from professionals in their 50s who spent years serving as paraprofessionals to bilingual apprentices and people of color. Most apprentices are in their 30s and are trying to support their families in rural parts of the state, Qualman said.
And about a dozen of the apprentices are men with a goal to teach elementary school grades — which women have historically flocked to over their male counterparts.
Among them is P. Gideon Daniel, a paraprofessional who specializes in helping kids with disabilities at Turman Elementary School, part of Harrison School District 2 in Colorado Springs. Daniel, 44, has devoted his career to working with even younger children in day care and as an early childhood educator, including for Head Start. He became a paraprofessional two years ago, craving more respect as an educator and anticipating that working at the elementary level would help him better home school his own child.
“In elementary, you are more valued,” Daniel said. “You are looked at as a person who can bring something to the table whereas at a preschool level, I hate to say it, but people look at you sideways and always have since I began my career 30 years ago. You’re a man. How can you be nurturing? What is your ulterior motive? And that was just something I was done with in a lot of ways. It breaks my heart, but it is the reality.”
As a paraprofessional, Daniel has stepped outside the regular parameters of a para to lead literacy lessons. He also supports students with special needs so that they can learn alongside their peers.
Without the time to add a college courseload into his work schedule, Daniel had long assumed a teaching career was simply not in his future.
He’s now deep into his classes at Colorado Mountain College and, during the school year, consults his principal, supervisor and mentor teacher to devise a plan that blends what he’s learning in school and how he teaches his students.
Paraprofessional P. Gideon Daniel shows off his playground skills on the slide with one of his students at Turman Elementary School July 9, 2025, in Colorado Springs. Daniel, who supports kids with disabilities, is working toward becoming a teacher through a new degree apprenticeship program that blends online college coursework with on-the-job classroom training. (Brian Malone, Special to The Colorado Sun)The apprenticeship program, which Daniel will complete over two years, has also given him a way to stick with the students he’s closely watched make strides the past few years.
“These kids have value,” said Daniel, who plans to either keep working with young students with disabilities or pivot to teaching middle school social studies. “They have meaning. And especially when you’re dealing with a neurodivergent population, they need consistency. And throughout my career, I have seen turnover, high, high turnover. I would sacrifice my own education to stay present with some of these students.”
Harrison School District 2 walked nine teacher apprentices through the program last year with another six teacher apprentices slated to begin this fall. Christina Gillette Randle, who recruits teacher apprentices for the district and oversees the apprenticeship program, said the program gives people who are already embedded in their local community and who are sold on a teaching career a more affordable path to the classroom — one that doesn’t sacrifice quality.
Turman Elementary School in Colorado Springs, pictured July 9, 2025, is one Colorado school participating in a state teacher apprenticeship program that gives aspiring educators who never went to college a flexible and more affordable way to pursue a bachelor’s degree and teacher’s license. (Brian Malone, Special to The Colorado Sun)“We’re not changing the bar, the gold standard of a bachelor’s,” said Gillette Randle, who taught first grade for 19 years. “We are still doing that work, but they’re just doing it more on their time and it’s more application, real-world learning.”
As more paraprofessionals make the leap into teaching, Gillette Randle said she wonders who will come up behind them to take their place.
One potential pool of candidates Harrison School District 2 and other districts are considering: high school students.
Before Colorado debuted teacher degree apprenticeships, CareerWise Colorado helped districts stand up programs that funneled high school students into paraprofessional roles. The hope was that those students would be better positioned to go off to college, earn a degree and become a licensed educator and boomerang right back to their home district to teach, said MK Sagaria-Barritt, who helps develop apprenticeships across industries for CareerWise Colorado and has assisted Colorado districts in starting the teacher apprenticeship program.
But there was no guarantee that every student would return, creating what Sagaria-Barritt calls a “leaky pipeline.”
The new apprenticeship program is helping patch up that pipeline and sustain Colorado’s teacher workforce, with leaders behind the program optimistic they can scale teacher apprenticeships to accelerate the number of highly trained paraprofessionals-turned-teachers.
“They are already doing the work of becoming a teacher by being a para,” Sagaria-Barritt said. “So by staying on track and just having some additional supports, as well as additional coursework, it really catapults you into what’s next.”
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