Welcome to the Elementary Teacher Preparation Program,
We’re pleased that you have decided to work with a teacher candidate as a Mentor Teacher. We know that with your busy schedule and the heavy demands of teaching, it is a challenge to find time to work with another adult in the classroom.
We have prepared this guide to provide useful information about our program and policies that apply to the teacher candidates working in your classroom, and to provide suggestions for helping teacher candidates get the most out of the time they spend with you.
We hope that you will find the information useful and encourage you to make suggestions regarding additional information that you would find helpful.
The Elementary Pre-Internship Coordinator works with the principals to place teacher candidates, and to facilitate communication between Teacher Preparation Program (TPP), course instructors and each school’s MTs and the principal. The Elementary Pre-Internship Coordinator assures all teacher candidates have suitable field placements and assures all teacher candidates are well supported, supervised and evaluated.
Seniors are generally in their field placements by October 1 and remain there for the MSU academic school year for 4 hours a week. In some cases, senior placements may change for Spring Semester.
TE 301 has two components: a class component and a field component that requires working one-on-one with a child (referred to as “child study student”) between grades 1-4 for a total of 45 minutes at least once per week. In the fall and spring semesters, this placement is arranged by the Elementary Pre-Internship Coordinator with a local public school. In the summer, teacher candidates locate their own child study student. The child can be someone the junior already knows or the Elementary Pre-Internship Coordinator can help arrange access to a child.
The Teacher Preparation Program is designed to have juniors and seniors participate regularly in local classrooms. The Elementary Pre-Internship Coordinator, along building administration, identify teachers who would like to work with juniors in conjunction with TE 301, or seniors in conjunction with senior-year methods courses, TE 403, 404, 405 and 406. These courses focus on the following content:
The Teacher Preparation Program is designed to work toward helping teacher candidates make progress in several areas aimed in building inclusive learning communities for diverse learners:
Mentor Teachers who work with teacher candidates report many advantages of opening their classroom to novices who are learning to teach. Mentor teachers take on the role of teacher educator.
In short, MTs benefit professionally from this experience.
Teacher candidates will follow all Teacher Preparation Program policies and procedures, as well as requirements found in the course syllabus.
Course Instructors
Coordinators
TE 301 Mentor Teachers
TE 403/404/405/406 Mentor Teachers
In most cases, you will be working with a person who, quite understandably, has a student’s habits of seeing, hearing, interpreting, and acting. That person needs both opportunities and help to start constructing a teacher’s habits of seeing, hearing, interpreting, and acting. These suggestions begin with the first moment that the teacher candidate walks into your classroom to meet you.
Introduce the teacher candidate to your pupils as Mr. or Ms. ________, a “teacher candidate,” someone who is preparing to be a teacher and who will be working with you for the next few months.
Keep the candidate near you, in a teacher’s place rather than a student’s place, where you can easily and quickly say something to the candidate, hand the candidate something, ask the candidate something, or tell the candidate to do something. This will help to put the candidate into the role of an apprentice or junior colleague who needs to see, hear, and think like a teacher. This useful interaction can go on even in 10-second moments of time.
Tell and show the candidate what’s going on in your mind. As students, teacher candidates have watched and listened to teachers for thousands of hours. Seldom will they have had any similar opportunity to learn what teachers think about while they are teaching. Show the candidate whatever you have in the way of curriculum and plans. Tell the candidate your immediate goals, or alternatives that you are considering. Let the candidate know when you’ve done something that you would be proud to repeat, or that you wish you had done another way.
Ask the candidates to tell you what they are reading, discussing, doing in the TE classes. As you listen to the response, you will probably hear opportunities to help the candidate connect the course materials to what is being seen, heard, or done in the classroom.
Involve the teacher candidates with students in small ways. Make the class list available to the teacher candidate. Ask the candidate to work with particular students or small groups by tutoring, listening to students read, studying their work, etc.
Give small responsibilities to the candidate, with supervision. For example, ask the candidate to help you monitor seatwork, group work, lab work, or work in activity centers. Or, ask the candidate to help you respond to students’ written work. As you assign such tasks, tell the candidate what you’ll be looking for and doing, so that the candidate can try to do likewise.
Ask the candidate to observe students closely. Teacher candidates need to build an informed and empathetic idea of the diversity of students in typical classrooms. Candidates can do this by keeping an eye on particular students as the semester progresses, working with them regularly, keeping a collection of the students’ work, keeping a journal of their interactions with the selected students, etc.
Ask the candidate to take observation and note-taking breaks. It can be hard to make sense of what’s going on at the same time as you’re trying to play an unfamiliar part in it. Frequently, teacher candidates will have course assignments that require them to gather information from your class. Ask the candidate to take periodic breaks to observe, reflect, analyze, and write notes.
Share the professional norms of your school. In every school, the staff more or less shares some ideas about how members of the staff should (and should not) act or interact. These norms are not highly visible to students. You can help the candidate to notice these norms both by giving your own account of them and by arranging opportunities for the candidate to ask other staff members about them.
The Teacher Candidate should: