From “Student teachers across Western Pa. welcome state’s new stipend” by Megan Tomasic, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 11/30/24.
Brianna Savko looked at her phone one day this fall after teaching a class in the Greensburg Salem School District and immediately started jumping for joy.
The 22-year-old learned she was receiving the state’s new student teacher stipend.
“I was super excited,” Ms. Savko, a senior in Carlow University’s education program, said. “I was like ‘Oh my gosh, here it is. This is the email.’ And I just couldn’t wait to open it and read it.”
At the time, Ms. Savko became one of over 2,000 college students studying education who were informed they would receive the financial incentive as part of the state’s new student teacher stipend program. The initiative gives a stipend of $10,000 to student teachers meeting program requirements. An additional $5,000 is available to those working in high-need areas.
“We really see a benefit in providing stipends for students. … We hear from our students that that’s one of the deterrents to even really considering going through a teacher certification program is the inability for them to leave full-time employment for a semester,” Keely Baronak, chair of Carlow University’s Department of Education and Liberal Studies, said.
The program was created last year when Gov. Josh Shapiro established the $10 million Educator Pipeline Support Grant Program. It aims to relieve financial strains education students feel as they complete unpaid student teacher programs while also encouraging more people to consider the education field as the number of teachers across the state dwindles.
It officially opened in April to interested students, who within 24 hours had submitted 4,500 applications to the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA), which is administering the program for the state.
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Now, students across Western Pennsylvania are reacting to the stipend — whether they received it or not — and are weighing in on the future impacts the program could have on Pennsylvania’s education system.
“I was absolutely thrilled,” Sarah Seremet, a Carlow student who received the stipend, said. “It was something that seemed kind of intangible at first and so actually having the notification that I truly got it … I was so excited.”
Ms. Seremet, a 24-year-old graduate student, said she wasn’t sure if she’d receive the stipend, which is allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.
But as someone studying education, Ms. Seremet knew the importance of having “a plan A, a plan B, a plan C, pretty much going the whole way down through the alphabet.” Those plans largely hinged on her family — Ms. Seremet lives with her parents in Latrobe — helping to cover the cost of things such as gas and groceries, something she would not have a steady income to fund while she was completing unpaid student teaching.
As she was taking classes for her master’s, Ms. Seremet, who has a bachelor’s in biology, also worked as a substitute teacher, giving her a steady income until she began student teaching this year.
But now, Ms. Seremet, who is graduating in December and who has received her stipend in the mail, doesn’t have to worry about her family covering her bills as she wraps up her program.
“They kind of went from that position of not really having to support me to having to support me,” Ms. Seremet said of her parents, “and so I think that it was a big relief for them and of course they were congratulatory, everything like that. I think it worked out best for everyone.”
