Amid a severe teacher shortage that has gripped school districts nationwide, the Teacher Accelerator Program (TAP) has risen to the challenge by preparing 151 new educators for Miami-Dade County classrooms, significantly bolstering the region's efforts to address a critical need.
The Florida Department of Education and the Florida Education Association reported a decrease in opening-day teacher vacancies from 2023-2024. Despite this progress, 5,007 instructional vacancies remain across the state, with Miami-Dade County Public Schools accounting for 194 of these positions, down from 389 the previous year. Challenges such as growing student populations and increasing teacher burnout continue to exacerbate the shortage, contributing to significant learning gaps for students.
One major program that aims to close this gap is TAP, an idea born from Achieve Miami's founder and president Leslie Miller Saiontz, who teamed up with the Miami-Dade chapter of Teach for America and the University of Miami to mitigate the problem.
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"Our goal is to make sure that every student has a teacher in front of them," said Jasmine Calin-Micek, TAP's senior director of programming.
The accelerator program was launched at the University of Miami in January 2023 for students interested in being in the classroom but not studying education. Recognizing the need to broaden its reach, TAP has expanded its partnerships to include Florida International University and Miami-Dade College in January 2024, making it accessible to college seniors and graduates with a four-year degree.
That is the case of Tylor Housen, a 23-year-old who graduated with a bachelor's in psychology from Florida State University. He has always had a vision to help people and found that path through education at TAP.
"When I was growing up, I had some good and bad teachers," he said. "I wanted to be able to be that light for the kids in order for them to shine."
Housen was part of TAP's 2024 cohort and teaches science at Frederick Douglass Elementary for 4th and 5th grade.
"I feel like not only I'm teaching kids, but they're teaching me a lot about myself and the world," he added.
To get the certification and be placed in a school, non-education majors must enroll in a semester-long college-level course that prepares them to teach in K-12 classrooms alongside veteran educators, enroll in a six-week paid summer internship, and, lastly, get a certification. TAP supports the students through the hiring process, whether it is a public school, charter, or private school.
"We're really about people taking agency of their career," said Calin-Micek. "Our goal is to just get this nice pipeline of educators into the classroom through a lot of different routes."
Housen explained that he learned valuable tools during his time at TAP because of the hands-on experiences throughout the internship, such as teaching rotational classes in small groups.
This story was produced by The Miami Times, one of the oldest Black-owned newspapers in the country, as part of a content sharing partnership with the 港澳天下彩newsroom. Read more at .
