Teacher candidates usually have one shot at a great student teaching placement. Universities can help aspiring teachers in this essential part of their training by
setting conditions for strong placements. This includes policies that
require student teachers to be placed in classrooms
with an exceptional classroom teacher.
Alyson Roberts, an
elementary reading intervention teacher with nine years of experience, stresses this important point: candidates need to be paired with cooperating teachers who have a strong
record of success. Unfortunately, as our
Teacher Prep Review found, this is
all too often not the case. Only 28
percent of the 1370 programs evaluated on this standard require that cooperating teachers be good mentors or
receive mentorship training. Only nine percent of the programs require that cooperating teachers be effective instructors.
Having a great cooperating teacher for student teaching can
be the make-or-break experience for teacher candidates. The quality of a candidate’s student
teaching experience is too important to be left to chance.
For more information about the Review’s Student Teaching Standard and examples
of programs that stand out,
check out the full findings report.
