When Carolina alumna Megan Rhodes and NC State grad Zachary Francis graduated from college, neither had immediate plans to lead their own North Carolina classroom. But both say they knew teaching and creating impact in the lives of K-12 students was a profession they would love.
After graduating in 2007 with degrees in public policy and geography, Rhodes spent time teaching English in South Korea and then traversing the globe as a member of the cabin crew for a top global airline. Francis, who graduated in 2015 with a degree in communications and media, was a sports journalist, including 2½ years as a sports anchor and reporter for a CBS affiliate in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Nearly five years ago, Rhodes and Francis each changed career paths and entered classrooms as residency license teachers — formerly known as lateral-entry teachers. As residency license teachers, Rhodes was hired to teach fourth grade at New Hope Elementary in Orange County and Francis to teach English at Lee County High School in Sanford.
Residency license teachers enter classrooms with college degrees, subject expertise, and relevant professional experiences. However, they don’t enter with a full teaching license. To continue teaching, Rhodes and Francis each had to earn that license within their first three years in the classroom. They both turned to Pathway to Practice NC — an online educator preparation program offered by their alma maters, NC State and UNC-Chapel Hill, specifically designed to help residency license teachers earn a full teaching license.
Pathway to Practice NC is a unique collaboration between the UNC School of Education and the NC State College of Education that provides a 100% online, self-paced, and competency-based program to help North Carolina’s residency licensed teachers, who are working educators, earn full licensure. The program, which is subscription-based, can be paused or resumed at any time and costs about $5,000 if completed in one year.
Since 2017, that model has served more than 530 residency license teachers from 90 of the state’s 115 school districts. Pathway to Practice NC earned accreditation — with no stipulations or areas for improvement — from the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation this month.
Rhodes, who completed Pathway to Practice this past spring, said she enrolled in the program because of the affiliation between Carolina and NC State, and the strength of both universities. She said she appreciated Pathway to Practice’s flexibility and the program’s learning modules which helped enable her to do her job to “the best of her ability.”
A thoughtfully designed program
Ahead of Pathway to Practice’s launch, its creators — UNC School of Education and NC State College of Education faculty members, renowned researchers, and subject matter experts — sought to deliver high-quality, asynchronous modules for residency license teachers like Rhodes and Francis, full-time educators who represent a range of grade levels and subject matter.
“What we wanted to do was leverage the expertise of our faculty and program administrators to provide a program that would go far beyond our own campuses to serve the state of North Carolina,” said Diana Lys, UNC School of Education assistant dean for educator preparation and accreditation, who created and is operational lead for Pathway to Practice.
“Every step has been in partnership and collaboration — from ideas, to brainstorming, all the way through writing the curriculum,” said Alison Winzeler, director of Pathway to Practice NC and director of alternative licensure at the NC State College of Education.
That partnership resulted in a program that enables residency license teachers to complete modules — including ones focused on building supportive classroom environments, lesson planning, assessment, how to modify lessons based on student need, subject-specific content, and more — as their schedule allows. Each module is designed for teachers to embed within their own classrooms and is aligned with local, state and national standards.
“I appreciated the way the program is organized and falls into different modules. There’s some about understanding your classroom community and procedures, then others are more subject-based modules. There’s writing, reading, social studies, and more,” said Rhodes.
Being a competency-based program means that residency license teachers master each competency — like developing evidence-based instruction to support fluent reading or identifying student needs and applying that knowledge to enhance instruction — at their own speed and then move on to the next. Some modules may be completed quickly, and some may require more time to complete.
“Not only is it all online, but it’s also asynchronous, so it works well with a busy teacher schedule. They can submit assignments early in the morning before they go to school or later in the evening. That flexibility is one thing that draws people to the program,” said Rachel Lewis, NC State’s alternative licensure specialist.
Francis echoed the importance of the program’s flexibility: “The program helped me learn how to balance work and life. At night, I’m sitting down working on schoolwork for myself. Or I could say I need to put Pathway to Practice on the back burner for right now because we’ve got this big unit or I’ve got 90 essays I’m trying to grade in the next week.”
In addition to flexibility, Pathway to Practice also provides one-on-one support for the teachers it serves. During their studies, if students need help mastering modules, they receive support from an assigned facilitator. All Pathway to Practice facilitators are doctoral candidates at either NC State or UNC-Chapel Hill and are former classroom teachers.
“As a former teacher, I am constantly thinking backâ¯to what was practicallyâ¯impactful in the classroom when I am giving feedback,” said Mary Kathryn Oyaga, a facilitator and NC State doctoral student. “I think through strategies that supported my students in their learning and then share those strategies with myâ¯Pathway to Practice candidates. It is really encouragingâ¯when a candidate shares how a strategy that I have shared has moved the needle on student learning in their classroom.”
Francis found the facilitators to be another bright spot of the program.
“Anytime I had a question, I knew I could reach out to anyone, and it wouldn’t take long to get a response, which is something I was thankful for because of how helpful everybody was,” said Francis. “The feedback I got from my mentors was fantastic because it’s stuff I wasn’t going to think about at that point.”
At the end of the program, residency license teachers complete their Education Teacher Performance Assessment, a daunting step in the licensure process. The portfolio-based assessment requires them to gather materials and share a narrative on their lessons along with a video of a class. Once submitted and passed, they are eligible for their full license. To date, 100% of Pathway to Practice NC completers have passed the assessment, 90% on their first attempt.
“These teachers want a program that is going to help them do better at their job,” said Winzeler. “We get lost in the numbers and administrative stuff, but when we read an email from someone that talks about how they enjoyed learning and then applied the information to their classroom, that is impactful.”
Editor’s note: Janine Bowen, a writer and editor with NC State’s College of Education, contributed to this article.