Brandon Mendoza was a senior at UC Berkeley when he first saw the flier: Get paid to try out teaching in your community.
Mendoza, who had always hoped to become a teacher, was curious — he didn’t realize he could test the career before jumping in.
So he applied, went through the program, and got his substitute teaching credentials. Soon after, he was hired as a sub at the same school he was placed in throughout the program: East Oakland Pride Elementary. And today, he’s a student-teacher there too, helping out in a bilingual kindergarten class while he earns his master’s in education.
“After meeting these kids, I just felt like I needed to get my credential as soon as possible, for the sake of these students,” said Mendoza, now 23. “If it wasn’t for the program, I never would have found this school. My pathway would have been a lot different.”
Since April of 2022, 54 people like Mendoza have gone through the Pipeline to Increase Community Teachers (PICT) initiative, which is run by the Alameda County Office of Education. It’s an attempt to fix the teacher shortage sweeping the Bay Area, and one that works by placing community members — from college students to stay-at-home moms to yoga instructors — inside the classroom.
To date, the program has funneled subs into the Oakland, Emeryville, Hayward and San Leandro Unified school districts, which were targeted by the County Office due to exceptionally high demand for substitutes. Through four days of training, months of mentorship, and opportunities to shadow an educator, the team behind the program hopes more people will be drawn into the world of teaching, especially those who might not have considered the field before.
“I think there are people out there that have all the skills to be a teacher, but no one’s ever pointed that out to them,” said Channon Jackson, the program’s director. “In any way that I can, I try to get people from the community to try it out.”
Yuko Arai had been a stay-at-home mom for 12 years before joining the program and becoming a sub at Dublin Unified. Tahirah Rasheed, an artist who specializes in neon-bending in West Oakland, is now gearing up to substitute teach at Oakland Unified in January.
“I did not think I’d end up teaching, but this feels like the right place to be,” said Rasheed, who lives in West Oakland. “I haven’t been this excited about something, aside from neon, in a long time.”
Across the country, more than three-quarters of public schools reported it was more difficult to find substitutes last academic year than before the pandemic. The same number reported to frequently rely on administrators, non-teaching staff, and teachers who were supposed to be on their free periods to cover classes, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Twenty percent of all requests for substitutes, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found, were unfilled in 2023.
Because of that, Jackson’s year was spent pinning up fliers in churches, community centers, university campuses, and child care centers. She did Q&A forums on campuses like UC Berkeley. And she found herself inserting pitches into daily conversations.
“I’ll often be out talking to people, and I’ll say, ‘You sound like you could be a great teacher! You should join my program!’” she laughed.
During the 2020-21 academic year, nearly 40% of schools in California had teaching vacancies they found either very difficult or impossible to fill, according to the Learning Policy Institute, a research organization that focuses on K-12 education. That, of course, trickled down to the need for — and the lack of — substitute teachers, which classrooms are still feeling today.
“The more shortages you have, the more demands that are placed on the existing staff in schools,” said Tara Kini, the chief of policy and programs at the Learning Policy Institute. “And if you can’t find a sub, it’s a scramble, scramble, scramble for the teachers, principal and others that need to cover that class.”
School districts have tried to pull more substitutes in by increasing their daily pay. Oakland Unified pays substitutes around $280 a day, while Alameda Unified pays nearly $340. At the Mt. Diablo Unified, Fremont Unified, and San Jose Unified school districts, that rate comes in a range, but subs can earn as much as $300, $284 and $350 a day respectively.
On top of that, last fall, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that waived the requirement for prospective substitutes to pass a basic skills proficiency until July of 2024. Today, prospective teachers can get the most common permit — the Emergency 30-Day Substitute Permit — by submitting their official bachelor’s degree transcripts, filling out an application, filing their fingerprints, and paying a $100 application fee.
For some districts, that — along with expanding their hiring periods to be year-round — has worked. After massive substitute teacher shortages during the pandemic, San Jose Unified now has more substitutes than it needs. But even so, some districts are continuing to struggle. Claudia Tyler, a mother of three children who went to San Ramon Valley Unified, said she subbed for years across the district’s classrooms — but not because she needed the money.
“I subbed to help out my son’s elementary school, which was in a constant state of needing subs nearly every single day,” Tyler said.
With the new program, Jackson is hoping to change that. After Mendoza shadowed a teacher — and tried out subbing — he was hired to become a site-specific sub the following year. He then applied for his master’s degree in education, and this academic year, began student-teaching at East Oakland Pride, too.
“The last time (most subs) stepped foot in a classroom might have been when they were a student themselves — so they have no idea what to do,” said Jackson. “I want them to feel as successful as they possibly can the minute they go into that room.”