The Golden Apple Accelerators Program provides a path to teaching for career-changers and college seniors who commit to living and teaching in targeted school districts in southern, central, and western Illinois for four years after obtaining their teaching license.

The Accelerators program was designed to meet the teacher shortage crisis head on throughout southern, central and western Illinois by recruiting, preparing and mentoring college seniors and non-educators with bachelor’s degrees looking to make a difference in classrooms right in their communities.

Benefits

• Obtain a teaching license within 15 months

• Up to $30,000 stipend to apply to coursework and/or housing

• One-year residency and training program in a targeted partner school district in southern, central, or western Illinois

• Pursue coursework and earn credit at a partner university 

• Job placement in a partner school district in southern, central, or western Illinois; begin teaching full-time in Fall 2022

• Instruction from award-winning educators

• Mentoring in the first years of teaching

Eligibility Requirements

• College seniors attending universities or colleges who are not currently on a teaching pathway 

• Career-changers who hold bachelor’s degrees

• Illinois residents, U.S. citizens, eligible non-citizens, or Illinois Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) students live in or are from communities in southern, central, or western Illinois

• Able to commit to working in an Illinois school-of-need for four years after program completion

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• Visit https://www.goldenapple.org/accelerators to learn more