CEA Aspiring Educators are speaking out at a public hearing of the legislature’s Education Committee today, letting lawmakers know why it’s so important that education students receive pay for student teaching.
SB 1513, An Act Concerning Aspiring Educators, would provide a stipend to college students while they complete their student teaching. Currently college students in almost every other field receive pay for required internships, but aspiring educators do not.
“We firmly believe that providing stipends for student teaching is a critical step in strengthening our teacher pipeline and addressing the growing teacher shortage in our state,” CEA Education Issues Specialist Elizabeth Sked told legislators.
Aspiring educators face significant financial hurdles on their journey to the classroom. The student teaching experience, often a full-time, unpaid commitment, presents a substantial barrier, particularly for candidates from historically underrepresented and low-income backgrounds.
“Many student teachers must forgo paid employment for an entire semester or longer while they fulfill their required placements, making it financially unfeasible for some to complete their certification. Others are forced to juggle multiple jobs just to make ends meet, further stretching themselves thin. By offering stipends to student teachers, SB 1513 would help alleviate this financial burden and create a more equitable path into the profession. This investment would ensure that talented, passionate individuals are not deterred from becoming educators simply because they cannot afford to work for free,” Sked said.
“Let’s avoid giving students a reason to turn their back on teaching,” Quinnipiac master’s degree student Julia Lockery told legislators. “Often, students are forced away from the profession because they cannot afford to devote their time to an unpaid position. Internships across a majority of studies offer compensation. Student teaching is the outcast. It is unfair for students who possess the calling and the passion for teaching to be unable to fulfill it due to finances.”
“As a student and a mom of two little ones it has been very disappointing and difficult to be required to leave a stable job and lose income to complete student teaching,” Mitchell College student Elda Hernandez said. “It becomes very hard to maintain a roof over my head and be able to pay for college when this type of hours with no pay are required to earn a degree.”
Connecticut requires at least 440 hours of service as a student teacher in order to become a certified educator, but many education programs require additional classroom hours of their students.
“For most students in teacher education programs, student teaching is not our first experience in the field,” UConn student Hannah Spinner said. “The Neag School of Education requires at least 100 hours of observation in schools in our junior year. Not only do we observe, though, but we take pull-out groups, act as a classroom support, teach lessons during that time, and are learning educational theory and methods in our aligned coursework and have opportunities to practice such. By the time we get to student teaching, we know that we have a strong background from which to base our instruction off of. We aren’t veteran teachers and do not claim to be, but we have a level of experience coming into this that many people in other fields do not have prior to their internships.”
She continued, “I watch as my business major friends get positions paying $15,000 for just the summer at insurance companies and my engineering major friends receive pay rates of $25 an hour for theirs while knowing that their resumes are mostly just compiled of coursework and contain little to no practical involvement in the responsibilities outlined in their job title. Meanwhile, I receive no pay for my own work regardless of the fact that I have multiple exposures to and participation in my exact duties.”
“Student teaching is one of the most demanding and transformative experiences in an educator’s preparation,” UConn student and aspiring ESL teacher Danyelix Echevarris Figueroa told the Committee. “It is a full-time commitment, often 40 hours a week in the classroom, plus lesson planning, grading, and coursework. But despite our essential role in schools, student teachers receive no financial compensation. Many of us are expected to work unpaid while still covering tuition, rent, gas, and other living expenses. This particularly worries me as UConn does not provide guaranteed housing for all students. This financial strain discourages many talented, passionate future educators, especially first-generation, low-income, and minority students, from completing their degrees or pursuing teaching altogether.”
“The teacher shortage in Connecticut is no longer a looming threat, it is a reality,” said Sked. “School districts across our state are struggling to recruit and retain qualified educators, particularly in high-need areas such as special education and STEM. Providing financial support for aspiring educators will help attract a more diverse and talented pool of future teachers, leading to stronger retention rates and a more stable workforce. By incentivizing student teaching through stipends, we can ensure that more individuals complete their preparation programs and enter the workforce fully equipped to succeed in the classroom.”
