Learning to Teach, Teaching to Trouble: Youth Educators’ Pedagogical Development in a Grow-Your-Own Teacher Pipeline Program

“Grow your own” teacher pipeline programs aim to support young people to become teachers. Prior scholarship has documented how these programs can address educational inequities by recruiting and preparing youth of color to become equity-oriented teachers in the future. Few studies have explored how youth educators enact their commitments to equity in the present. Grounded in scholarship on liberatory education and critical consciousness, this multiyear case study explores the opportunities and tensions encountered by college-aged youth educators as they learned to teach other youth within a district-based program. Findings highlight that youth educators’ pedagogical development involved teaching and learning for critical consciousness amidst shifting relationships, responsibilities, and circumstances. The findings challenge the prevailing logic of programs that channel youth through existing educational structures. They point to the need for increased opportunities for youth to envision and enact the kinds of re-imagined and liberatory educational experiences that matter most to them.