The Virginia Board of Education approved Germanna’s Future Educators Academy, a lab school that will provide an accelerated track for aspiring teachers. This comes as part of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s initiative to develop more signature lab schools throughout the Commonwealth.
Germanna’s Future Educators Academy partners with Laurel Ridge Community College, James Madison University, and the public school divisions in Culpeper, Madison, Rappahannock, and Orange counties, to provide an innovative, fast-tracked pathway for the next generation of teachers. The program streamlines the journey towards becoming a licensed teacher by allowing students to receive an associate degree in high school and complete their bachelor’s degree in as little as two years.
“The idea of the Future Educators Academy,” says Dr. Janet Gullickson, president of Germanna, “is to create a no-cost, accelerated pipeline to quickly fill teacher openings by growing our own K-12 teachers in partnership with school divisions.”
At the conclusion of the program, students will work in their rural school divisions, helping to address the teacher shortage. The Future Educators Academy will launch in August 2024.