Full-time student teaching should not be an aspiring teacher’s first time working with students. Many prep programs embed earlier fieldwork experiences, and several places leverage the national focus on high-impact tutoring to provide their candidates with meaningful field experiences that both help them refine their instructional skills and meet an important need in the education field.
“Get them into the schools as early as you can and as often as you can,” was the advice shared by Carolyn Parker, director of graduate teacher education and a senior faculty member at American University’s School of Education.
American University
This institution partnered with the state education agency and District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) to provide experiences for undergraduate teacher candidates to tutor students. The tutors receive coursework and professional development in high-impact tutoring, restorative practice, and the science of reading. Tutors are compensated for their time with grant funds from DC’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education, which supports high-intensity tutoring. Tutors receive $18 per hour, plus are compensated for travel costs, such as public transit or rideshares. Carolyn Parker, director of graduate teacher education, shares, “Requiring our preservice teachers to tutor students early and often encourages teacher candidates to build healthy and educative relationships with students and communities across the city.” While American University is located in a wealthier part of the city, tutors are sent to schools across the city, which will hopefully encourage them to student teach in those schools and build ties with the community.
Samford University and Mount St. Joseph University
Several prep programs embed candidates in a specific school for earlier fieldwork experiences and methods courses. Samford University embeds junior-year teacher candidates in local schools and has them tutor students in mathematics, among other activities. Mount St. Joseph University also embeds candidates in local schools before they start full-time student teaching, and candidates take methods courses and teach lessons while becoming deeply familiar with the school community.
Spokane Public Schools
Spokane in Washington State worked with a local university to build a student teaching portal to facilitate matches between cooperating teachers and student teachers. While the focus is primarily on student teaching, the portal also has a section focused on arranging earlier field experiences with a more streamlined process.
Ohio
Ohio awarded federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds to 32 colleges and universities to provide math and literacy tutoring to local school districts. The most successful models have been those that embed tutoring in existing coursework focused on teaching methods, so that the tutoring not only benefits K–12 students but also serves as an early field experience for teacher candidates. Tutoring programs embedded in teacher prep program coursework are reporting higher levels of positive experiences from the tutors and more positive feedback from school districts on outcomes like student engagement, attendance, and, anecdotally, student outcomes (though it is hard to isolate the effect of tutoring on student outcomes). One element that contributed to the success of this program was that it included comprehensive professional learning for institutions’ tutoring program leaders and tutors.
- Read more about the tutoring grant program
- Read Deans for Impact’s case study about a tutoring program at Bowling Green State University
States sometimes use legislation or code to require that aspiring teachers have early field experiences prior to full-time student teaching.
Pennsylvania
The state requires “sequential field experiences” that start before full-time student teaching or internships, including opportunities to “study and practice in a variety of communities, with students of different ages, and with culturally diverse and exceptional populations.”
Massachusetts
Similarly, Massachusetts requires pre-practicum experiences (field experiences prior to full-time student teaching). These include a requirement that candidates receive observation-based feedback from their program supervisor or course faculty at least twice during their pre-practicum experience. Prior to full-time student teaching, candidates must also complete at least two “gateway assessment” performance tasks that assess content-specific skills and include clearly defined minimum standards that candidates must meet in order to advance to student teaching.
Texas
The Texas State Board for Educator Certification and State Board of Education recently adopted new requirements to strengthen clinical practice across the state. These include increasing the field-based experiences requirement from 30 to 50 hours, with an explicit connection between coursework and field-based experiences.