A Self-Directed Teacher Preparation Program #3

Learning to Teach While Flying By the Seat of Your Pants

The irony is not lost on me as a college campus dean who teaches graduate classes in education and leadership, but who has never completed a formal Educator Preparation Program (EPP). My teacher preparation pathway was radically different from the norm. It did, however, pose many interesting (kind word) challenges; and dare I say, opportunities to develop into a creative, risk-taking educator. I was a blank slate, shaped both by the situation in which I placed myself and the school system I struggled with terribly as a kid in the 60s and '70s. At St. Mary’s Academy, I learned to teach through trial and error with support from mentors I sought out and whatever other resources I could find- all the while flying by the seat of my pants (not an experience for the faint of heart). 

I could have been more deliberate and enrolled in a graduate teacher preparation program, however, I needed to pay the bills and already had a Master’s Degree.  Instead, I chose a different option that required only 12 credits and a semester of student teaching. One year separated my “aha” moment as a guest speaker (Sept 1988) and my first month in a classroom (Sept 1989). During that time, I landed a job and “completed” the four required courses for certification: Human Growth & Development, Adolescent Psychology, School Culture, and Science Teaching Methods. Student teaching requirements would be met through my high school science teaching position at St. Mary’s Academy in Glens Falls, NY, with the school guidance counselor serving as my field supervisor. 

Further demonstrating my unpreparedness to teach, two of the four classes (Adolescent Psychology and Human Growth & Development) were credited through the College Level Examination Program (CLEP). This was basically an examination which, if passed, earned college credit for whatever subject the test represented. The third was Science Methods, which unfortunately  conflicted with an impromptu work assignment to Tunisia occurring only after my third week into the fall semester! I informed the professor of my predicament, and she assured me it wouldn’t be a problem and we’d catch up when I returned three months later. When I got back, she took me to a high school science classroom where I met and spoke with a certified high school chemistry teacher for a few hours, fulfilling my course requirements in my professor’s eyes (and mine)-I earned an A. School Culture was the one course I actually sat through for an entire semester. Sadly, I don’t believe I learned much from the 12 credits of coursework, but hey, it checked the boxes for certification. No worries… Wrong! I “graduated” woefully deficient to teach.

EPPs provide critically important foundational coursework along with experiences that help graduates negotiate the first few years of teaching. Courses in literacy, technology, special education, English as a second language, curriculum, instruction, and assessment are foundational. Furthermore, the New York State Education Department (NYSED) requires field work (chronicled hours in schools) be completed prior to the capstone event: 16 weeks of supervised student teaching. Field experience gives students a chance to better understand the school environment and system while offering a program escape option if they find teaching is not what they expected. Most programs can be completed in three or four semesters; and all must be NYSED-approved and go through accreditation cycles to ensure fidelity to standards. Some programs go beyond the traditional model, adding a clinically-rich component. One such program is the “Classroom Academy”, which began with SUNY Plattsburgh as its first higher education partner. (More on this topic in a later post.)

Being afforded/allowed to create my own teacher prep program set me in a precarious position as a first year teacher… and were it not for the joy of teaching others, I would have failed to make it through the year. In retrospect, I wish (back in the 80’s) that I had the opportunity to enroll in a program such as the Classroom Academy, where students are placed with a certified teacher for two years applying what is learned at the college to their experience in the classroom-all the while guided by their attending teacher. There would certainly have been fewer trials and errors taking the Academy pathway.

Lessons learned: Educator Preparation Programs with strong P-12 partnerships and rich, lengthy clinical experiences such as the Classroom Academy’s two-year residency model are key to early teaching success, as are finding mentors, pursuing professional development, and understanding/honoring the time commitment to do one’s best work.

Research

-Clinically-rich is the term used to describe apprenticeship-like experiences designed to prepare individuals fully for success in their chosen fields. Medical Schools are clinical program exemplars with robust internships where students apply classroom content to do doctor’s work under the watchful eye of skilled practitioners. Traditional EPPs offer a more limited version of clinical learning through student teaching, which unfortunately only occur after all coursework is completed; thereby preventing any immediate application of program learning to the P-12 environment. However, teacher shortages and a call for greater collaboration between P-12 schools and higher education have led to a growing number of teacher residency programs across the nation. Although research on residency program’s impact on P-12 student learning is scant, there is ample evidence of positive impacts on teacher recruitment and retention¹. 

-Common residency program characteristics identified by Guha, Hyler and Darling-Hammond (2017): “Feature strong partnerships between school districts and universities; Recruit high-ability candidates to meet specific district hiring needs, especially in fields where there are shortages; Provide a full year of clinical practice teaching alongside an expert mentor teacher; Provide relevant coursework that is tightly integrated with clinical practice; Recruit and train expert mentor teachers who coteach with residents; Place cohorts of residents in “teaching schools” that model good practices with diverse learners and are designed to help novices learn to teach; Offer ongoing mentoring and support for graduates; and Offer financial support for residents in exchange for committing to teach in the sponsoring district for a minimum number of years.”

-Sustaining residency programs requires a shift in thinking at all levels, particularly higher education and state education departments. There are successful examples of sustaining such programs, including the BOCES Contracts for Shared Service (CoSER) model used in the Classroom Academy² . The CoSER is an aid reimbursement program that returns participating schools with a portion of their initial investment based on state aid ratios. For the Academy, participating schools front the initial investment to cover student and mentor teacher stipends, and then receive the majority of their investment the following year based on their state aid ratio. 

1. Guha, Hyler, M. E., & Darling-Hammond, L. (2017). The power and potential of teacher residencies: the teacher residency model shows great promise in helping local school districts build a highly capable, diverse, and stable teaching workforce.(Teacher shortages). Phi Delta Kappan, 98(8), 31–31.

2. Dennis, H., & DeMoss, K. (2021). The residency revolution: Funding high quality teacher preparation. Prepared To Teach, Bank Street College of Education. tiny.cc/residencyrevolution.