DECATUR - For several years, the most acute shortage of teachers in Illinois has been in the field of special education.

Jeff Bakken, chairman of the special education department at Illinois State University, said that's due to a combination of factors: More students are identified as needing special education, teacher retirements and teachers who chose special education and realized a couple of years into their careers that they preferred another field.

Add to that, he said, recent state requirements for "response to intervention," in which children who are struggling are kept in regular classrooms but receive extra help that regular teachers are not always trained to provide.

"Typically, general education teachers don't take more than one or two special education courses," Bakken said. "They don't have the knowledge base to work with students with special needs."

Illinois State already has satellite programs for training special education teachers in Chicago, McLean County and Peoria, and Decatur was a logical choice for a fourth site.

"Richland (Community College) was just approved for an associate degree in teaching special education that will allow our students to complete the first two years, then transfer to Illinois State University," said Evyonne Hawkins, an instructor at Richland.

Students can take their first two years of college at Richland, then transfer to Illinois State for a semester and a half. The second half of their junior year, they will spend two days a week in a classroom here working with students. In their senior year, they'll spend the fall semester in "field-based training," five days a week working with students and their spring semester student-teaching, all locally. The hope is that after graduation, those new teachers will return to this area to teach.

"We graduate teachers ready to teach," said Terri Voss, Illinois State's coordinator for special education. All that time in a real classroom, working with an experienced teacher and students, prepares them in a way college classes couldn't, she said.

"They chose our area because we have a high need for special education teachers and a number of students they can observe in our school system," Hawkins said. "They're working hand in hand with the (Macon-Piatt) special education district."

Bakken said that because they want their students to be fully prepared to work with a diverse population, the Macon-Piatt area is ideal, with rural and suburban schools, in addition to Decatur's urban setting.

The program will begin with the fall semester, and Hawkins said several students at Richland already are registered.

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