Grow Your Own

FCPS proudly supports a Grow Your Own recruitment approach. Grow Your Own are strategies aimed at nurturing and developing talent within an organization to fill current and future job openings, rather than relying solely on external hires. The initiatives in the linked document involve identifying high-potential employees and providing them with training, mentorship, and career development opportunities to prepare them for teaching and other roles. By investing in our internal talent pool, we can improve employee retention, and create a more agile and skilled workforce.

Initiatives

download a printable version

Group Initiative Description Yield

Student

Teacher Academy of MD (TAM)
  • Housed at Career and Tech Center
  • Daily internship in our schools
  • Dual Enrollment
  • Weighted GPA
  • Eligible to substitute upon graduation
  • Recruiters on TAM Advisory Board

Students:

  • 2021-22: 15
  • 2022-23: 10
  • 2023-24: 13

Hires:

  • Teachers: 5
  • Support: 7

Student

Educators Rising Clubs
  • FCPS Recruitment Specialist on Advisory Board
  • Recruiters visit each club to discuss profession of teaching, pathways, working for FCPS upon graduation
  • 3 High School Programs

Student

Career Coaches
  • Each Middle and High School
  • Apprenticeships
  • Partnership Frederick County Workforce Development
  • Frederick Community College supports with PL and onboarding
  • 21 FCPS Career Coaches
  • 2 Career Coach Coordinators-one FCPS, one Frederick County Workforce Services

Student

Child Development Courses
  • High School/ECE teacher-includes Pre Kindergarten
  • 11/12 High Schools

Student

Teacher Apprenticeship Program
  • FCPS engaged in design of legislation which would recruit students in 10th grade
  • Pair with Dual Enrollment/Early College Partner
  • Hire as Instructional Assistant/Para while completing their program
  

FCPS Recruitment staff is heavily engaged with all of these programs. Staff go into the courses and meet with students to share FCPS job opportunities, pathways to teaching in FCPS, ways to work for FCPS upon graduation. We have partnered with a national organization, Get the Facts Out, who are working to dispel myths about the teaching profession (Pay, retirement, etc).

Student
Staff

Student Teachers/ Interns
  • Connect multiple times prior to and during internship
  • Hire as substitutes
  • Issue badges
  • Offer Early Open Contracts/Signing Day Event
  • Deans for Impact-Hood Partnership: designed to build an evidence-informed teacher pipeline that will better support interns and novice teachers through strong instructional pedagogy aligned to the science of learning
  • PDS-153
  • Non PDS 46

Year one (2023-24) Effortful Thinking:

  • 13 FCPS schools
  • 22 school-based classroom cooperating teachers
  • 11 school-based leaders/coordinators
  • 11 school-based administrators
  • 5 central office staff

Multiple data points are collected related to teacher actions and classroom strategy implementation in order to determine the effectiveness of the program and how to revise possible future iterations of this partnership. Initial data collection yields very positive results. Plans are in place to continue this partnership during the 2024-2025 school year with a new evidence-informed focus area, Prior Knowledge and Schema-Building.

Staff

Maryland Leads
  • Partnered with Mount St. Mary’s
  • Support Staff to Special Education Teachers
  • Support and Certificated Staff to Applied Behavior Analyst (ABA)
  • Dual Certification: 22
  • ABA-15

Staff

Extended IHE Partnerships with Direct Pay Options

These IHE’s have agreed to discounted tuition rates for FCPS employees.

The Direct Pay Option allows our employees to register for courses without the burden of having to pay the tuition up front and wait to be reimbursed after the course is complete.
  • Already had Partnerships with
    • Frederick Community College (Support only)
    • Frostburg State University
    • Hood College
    • McDaniel College
    • Mount St. Mary’s University
    • Trinity Washington University
    • University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC)
    • University of Phoenix
    • Walden University
  • Added
    • Bowie University-Ed Leadership Program
    • Frostburg State University-MD Accelerates- Elementary MAT
  • Anticipated Accelerated and Online programs
    • Frederick Community College/Frostburg State University-Secondary MAT
    • Towson-Special Education Program
    • Mount St. Mary’s-Addition of ECE program

Staff

Become an Educator

Semiannual event hosted by FCPS to share information about the pathways to MD Teacher Certification

  • Specifically target support staff and substitutes.
  • FCPS students and the community are invited.
  • MSDE, all MD colleges, our college partners, FCPS hiring team, FCPS supports
  • November 17, 2022-182
  • May 23, 2023-192
  • November 2, 2023-107

Staff

Tuition Benefits
  • Base tuition benefits for support staff-$1,500 annually
  • Those taking coursework that leads to teacher group certification-$3,500 annually
  • Eligible upon hire
  

Staff

Sabbatical Leave
  • Benefitted support employees eligible for sabbatical leave (5 years of active service) receive ½ pay for the sake of completing their student teaching/internship-full pay, full benefits package
  • 2021-2022: 6
  • 2022-2023: 7
  • 2023-2024: 4

Staff

Conditional Teaching Certificate
  • FCPS increases each year
  • Differentiated support from Professional Learning
  • Eligible for tuition benefits, Praxis fees
  • Certification team provide ongoing guidance
  • "Become Certificated" event specifically for our Conditional teachers

Current teachers on Conditional Certificate-241

Staff

Exceptional Leaders Innovating and Transforming Education (ELITE)
  • Designed to grow administrators
  • Prepares school based administrators for the role beyond internship
  • Aspiring assistant principals, and principals

Aspiring Assistant Principals (ELITE Academy):

  • 2021-22-8 participants, 100% Assistant Principals
  • 2022-23-10 participants, 30% Assistant Principals
  • 2023-24-14 participants

Aspiring Principals(ELITE Aspire):

  • 2021-22-9 participants, 22% Principals
  • 2022-23-9 participants, 11% Principals

Assistant principal Residents (ELITE Immersion):

  • 2022-23-2 participants, 100% Assistant Principals
  • 2023-24-4 participants