“Black Educator Apprenticeship Program (BEAP)”
2023 – 2026
The Foundation provided seed funding to help launch the BEAP program to support Black youth with an interest in the teaching profession. This was the first such program in Canada (Similar programs exist in the United States with successful results). The initial intent of BEAP had two purposes: (a) build a pipeline of Black teachers, and (b) provide Black children with their first Black “teacher” (the youth trainees) as research shows that Black children achieve better academic outcomes with Black teachers.
The program began as a summer-only proof of concept program with the first cohort serving 14 Grade 8 youth before transitioning into a year-long in-school program. Very quickly, the program was seeing more demand than they had capacity to accommodate. In total, 172 youth were trained and participated as 1-1 and small group tutors. 76 placements were further created for youth to go beyond 1-on-1 / small group tutoring and take on the role of Teaching Assistants during summer school.
Each year, youth experienced 50 hours of tutoring and 120 hours of classroom teaching. 88% of youth acting as Teaching Assistants in summer school were rated by host teachers as “Meeting or Above Expectations” for a University-level teacher candidate. This result was achieved despite youth being around 10 years younger and not yet having finished high school.
Participants were often recruited based on their ability to connect with children dealing with similar issues. For instance, Grade 8s who struggled with reading in their earlier years were recruited to be teachers to children who struggled with reading. These teachers had to learn through non-traditional or highly structured methods, which means they were (a) better able to relate to struggling students, and (b) better equipped to teach reading through a deliberate, structured process, (compared to those for whom it comes more naturally).
Evaluation results showed that:
- Each cohort starts with very little interest in teaching (0-11%). After a year, up to 88% see it as a potential career path, and 90% believe they would succeed as a teacher.
- Nearly a thousand children received tutoring support, with extra attention given to children scoring at least one year behind on core subjects like reading and math. For many children, it was their first time learning from someone “who looks like them.”
- Nearly $250,000 worth of tutoring was delivered by our youth trainees over the lifecycle of the Foundation’s grant.
- 88% of youth want to return for future summers, and this interest in returning remains even after being away from the program for over six months.
- By stepping into the role of an educator, youth developed a newfound empathy for their teachers, leading to higher engagement in their own classrooms at school. 72% reported improvements in their academic performance, and 83% reported improved relationships with their own classroom teachers.
A few key insights from this work:
- Lived experience is a pedagogical asset; youth who struggled in school often make the most empathetic and effective teachers for children facing similar hurdles.
- Cultural similarities are often as important as racial similarities. Local youth possess a deep understanding of the specific socio-economic challenges and cultural norms within their community. They understand and have lived through the same educational inequities, making them uniquely qualified to mentor local children who are living through those same experiences.
- Black youth want to learn alongside non-Black participants. They told us that it’s important for them to be seen as equal by their peers, to have their peers learn about anti-Black racism, and to not give the appearance of Black students being tokenized or placed as Teaching Assistants without merit. We responded by adjusting the demographics of our program, expanding the scope to serve BIPOC youth broadly.
- Start early. Youth experience systemic issues in school during their primary years and begin to develop a firmer understanding of those issues in their middle years. Intervening at the Grade 8 level allows us to positively reshape their success trajectory before they are “streamed” out of the profession.
- It’s a core tenet of our organization that youth are empowered to teach; our mission is to turn youth from ‘educated’ to ‘educators.’ In this program, they aren’t just teaching children, they’re also teaching us (the staff). We get their feedback on our teacher training curriculum, and the best way we should teach it to other youth. Consistently, youth have reported that “collaborating and sharing ideas” was the most impactful part of their experience. Our advice (or actually, the advice from youth) is to avoid a top-down training program. Instead, treat youth as colleagues; work collaboratively to figure out how they can best support children in the classroom. Youth are closer in age to the children than the staff are, and they have a much better sense into how children might be thinking and feeling.
About Youth Empowering Parents
The mission of Youth Empowering Parents is to ‘turn young people from educated to educator.’ We use our award-winning grassroots models to unlock community resources and inspire young people to be community changemakers. We view youth as a solution, not as a problem; as service-providers, not merely as service-recipients. We firmly believe that every youth, no matter if they are introverted or extroverted, high or low academic standing, and able-bodied or disabled, is capable, with the right supports, to become an effective contributor to a community challenge.