Wilkes-Barre, Pa.—Members of the King’s College education department were invited to the 2024 Hawaii International Conference on Education to share their Pipeline for Educational Articulation of Clinical Experience (PEACE) model, which gives high school students access to free education courses and instruction materials to jumpstart their teaching careers.
PEACE is funded by a $100,000 “Innovative Teacher Prep2Practice Program” grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE). PEACE encourages students from diverse communities to pursue a teaching career by giving them early access to classes that can be applied toward an undergraduate degree and teacher certification. All fees and textbooks are paid with grant funds.
As part of the effort, education faculty Dr. Denise Reboli, Dr. Jill Yurko, and Dr. Dara Soljaga are working with a network of Northeastern Pennsylvania partners including Wilkes-Barre Area High School, Hazleton Area High School, Luzerne County Community College, and Luzerne Intermediate Unit 18 (LIU18).
The program—now in its second year— is available to local junior and senior high school students who are in good academic standing and interested in pursuing education as a major when they attend college. The class, titled “Educational Philosophy, Ethics, Issues, and Trends,” is a three-credit college course.
Students interested in majoring in education or participating in this program can contact Michelle Landon, Director of Admission, at (570) 208-8390 or michellelandon@kings.edu.
“Our department is committed to breaking barriers to entry and getting more young people excited about pursuing a rewarding future in teaching,” said Dr. Soljaga. “What better way to do that than by giving aspiring students a free introduction to the profession that they can apply to a future degree or certification? We’re grateful we could share our program at the conference and hope it helps students around the world.”
PEACE, first announced in February 2023, is one of several recent efforts by the College’s Education Department to improve local access to teaching opportunities over the last year. In November 2023, the College and LIU18 announced a joint alternative teaching program that allows individuals to complete both the College’s Master of Education in Special Education and LIU18’s state-approved teaching certification programs simultaneously.
In September 2023, the College welcomed its first group of Northeastern Pennsylvania educators as part of its new science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) endorsement program funded by a $295,000 PAsmart grant. Twenty teaching graduate students received grant-funded tuition, a laptop, and a kit of STEM instructional materials that includes programmable robots for classroom use.
From left to right: Dr. Soljaga, Dr. Reboli, Dr. Yurko at the 2024 Hawaii International Conference on Education