The Teacher Training Academy program, known commonly as Teacher TRAC, has extended its deadline for students to apply to Jan. 24 for the elementary pathway and Feb. 3 for the secondary and CTE (Career Technical Education) pathway.

Sue Parsons, director of the Teacher TRAC and Learning Communities Program, said that the deadline is usually at the end of the first week of every semester, but was pushed back due to the wait for a grant from the California Community College Chancellor’s Office.

According to Parsons, the financial support allows members of Teacher TRAC to apply for paid internships.

“We wanted to be inclusive as possible.

“We have a program; we want to help any student that wants to go into teaching. To get the formalized services, such as the counseling, the scholarships, internships, conference, you have to be a member of the program, you have to join the program so that we know who you are,” Parsons said.

Sugar Dalit, nursing major, said that she thinks the extension is a good idea.

“There’s a lot of programs we have here at Cerritos that are really limited on applying for programs they would like to have to take.

“I think it’s a really good idea for people that are taking any courses that would like to be teachers in the future,” Dalit said.

Patty George, chair of the mathematics department and a member of the Teacher TRAC faculty team, said that the Teacher TRAC program is a fantastic training program for future teachers.

George said that three courses in mathematics offered this semester through the program focus on things such as the real numbers system, geometry, and probability and statistics for elementary teachers.

“The students that have come back to Cerritos College after transferring have told us, anecdotally, that they were much better prepared for the mathematics at, for example [Cal State Long Beach], than the rest of the students that entered with them.

“The program gives students the opportunity to get to know each other, and they become friends, sometimes, I hope for the rest of their lives, but certainly in their first teaching experiences. It develops a program where they can call somebody and get help, because they’ve developed these strong bonds with other people in the Teacher TRAC program,” George said.

Teacher TRAC will hold an orientation for those who applied and were accepted into the elementary pathway on Jan. 27 in the Student Center from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.