Chair of Education Margaret Policastro, who marks her 45th anniversary at Roosevelt in 2025-26, brings us a wonderful success story about a student who went from tutoring within Roosevelt’s Metropolitan Chicago Teacher Corps (MCTC) to becoming a full-time teacher in CPS with her earned MA in Elementary Education and an endorsement in ESL/Bilingual Education in spring 2025.
Professor Policastro first met Jazmine Medina in spring 2023, when she was enrolled in her Teaching Reading K-8 course. This was a class for the Tutor to Teacher (T2T) pipeline program cohort, part of the MCTC partnership with the Chicago Public Schools that is funded by A Better Chicago (ABC) and the Polk Brothers Foundation. The students in the cohort hadn’t met each other formally until Professor Policastro’s class. “From the first class session, Jazmine stood out,” Professor Policastro recalls.“She was eager, engaged and full of questions.”
Jazmine graduated from St. Xavier University with a BA in Psychology in the spring of 2020. This was during the COVID-19 pandemic, so there was an online graduation instead of an in-person event. Jazmine recalled feeling no experience of actually finishing her degree or a sense of accomplishment. Struggling to find a job during the pandemic in the fall of 2020, Jazmine met up with a friend she had known from kindergarten whose older sister worked in CPS as part of the CPS Tutor Corps. Her friend’s sister was working as a tutor at Edward Hurley Elementary School, the same school Jazmine attended as a child. Hurley Elementary School was just two blocks from her home in Chicago’s West Lawn neighborhood, and her mother was also working at the school. Grateful to learn about the possibility of tutoring within CPS, Jazmine applied for the CPS Tutoring Corps.
That fall, Jazmine was hired as part of the CPS Tutor Corps program and started working at a CPS school. In December 2021, she was transferred to her own alma mater, Edward Hurley School, where she started tutoring K-5 students. Jazmine had a total of 36 students in eight small groups, and she worked with bilingual students in Spanish and English.
In summer 2022, Jazmine learned about the Roosevelt University Tutor 2 Teacher pipeline program. This program was developed for CPS tutors who already had a BA and could enroll in an alternative licensure program to earn an MA in Elementary Education. The program was completely funded by A Better Chicago, allowing the students to have a full scholarship. In January 2023, Jazmine was formally enrolled in the Tutor to Teacher pipeline as part of the Roosevelt University MCTC program. The alternative licensure program of study included spring and summer classes and the opportunity to become a “Teacher of Record” as a resident teacher.
In the Fall of 2023, she began her residency teaching at the Sherman School of Excellence and described this as “quite challenging.” However, Jazmine now looks back on her experience as a resident teacher as a time that prepared her well. In summer 2024, after completing her residency, Jazmine applied for a teaching position back at her beloved Edward Hurley School and was hired as the 3rd grade teacher, where she currently remains. During the last academic year, Jazmine completed her ESL/Bilingual subsequent endorsement. She earned a 4.0 GPA and graduated in May with her Elementary Education MA and subsequent endorsement. This time, she got to walk across the stage of the Auditorium Theatre with her fellow classmates to mark the moment in person. Jazmine hopes that her journey will inspire her own students to pursue their professional dreams in college. Her own experience will help her guide them to the many supports available at Roosevelt University to put those goals within reach.
