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Newsletter Volume 3 |
Spring 1999 |
Field Experience and Beginning Teacher Support Update
Jeff Turley
ACEPT Teacher Liaison
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Newsletter Volume 3 |
Spring 1999 |
During 1998 significant advances in the student teaching experiences for ACEPT teachers in training were achieved. Teacher liaisons Lynne Spiller, ACEPT/ Phoenix Urban Systemic Initiative Pre-Service Teacher Liaison, and I supervised and mentored 20 secondary math/ science student teachers throughout the Phoenix Metropolitan area. During the spring semester, all 13 ACEPT students were teaching biology in the high school setting. During the fall semester six ACEPT students were teaching biology, and one was working in a chemistry high school classroom. Although all students were teaching in high schools, their situations varied widely from an "International Baccalaureate" program in an upper middle class income area, to a basic biology class in a Phoenix inner city setting. During the 1999 spring semester the student teaching experiences are as varied, and there are about thirty student teachers participating in the ACEPT system under my and Lynne Spillers supervision.
Research has shown that educators find themselves to be isolated in the classroom. Therefore regular seminars led by me and Lynne during the student-teaching semester allowed the student teachers to meet with each other and with their supervisors. During these seminars each student teacher discussed his or her current experiences and challenges regarding his/her classroom placement. All the participants indicated that these seminars were of great value, in that the seminars provided each with an opportunity to relate his/her experiences and communicate with others having similar experiences, thus reducing the isolationism of student teachers during that crucial last semester before entering the teaching profession.
During the past year, ACEPT ramped up its Beginning Educator Support Program by forming a partnership with the ASU Professional Field Experience Program in ASUs College of Education, directed by Billie Enz who has been instrumental in establishing the Beginning Educator Support Team (BEST), a program to support beginning teachers during their initial three years in the profession. As an ACEPT Teacher Liaison, I had a role in the ACEPT BEST group, as did Eugene Judson, middle school teacher who has participated in ACEPT workshops and with me co-led an ACEPT Beginning Teacher Workshop last summer which focused on effective use of the new TI-73 graphing calculators which were loaned by Texas Instruments for the Workshop.
As part of the ACEPT BEST program, I was in contact with eleven former students of the ACEPT Teacher Education for Arizona Math and Science (TEAMS) program who are now working in the field throughout the state of Arizona. The ACEPT TEAMS program is a new post-baccalaureate program focusing on the math/science /technology preparation of middle school teachers. TEAMS offers a masters in education and secondary certification with specializations in math and science. TEAMS is now being institutionalized as an integral part of a new charter school for middle school students which will focus on mathematics and science, and is being jointly established by ASU TEAMS faculty and administrators, the Maricopa School District and the Arizona Educational Association, with initial funding contributed by Intel. The new school is expected to open in the fall of 1999.
In a mentor role, I am investigating the needs of first through third (induction) year ACEPT teachers now in the field. The purpose of this effort is to gather information for the support arm of ASUs newly established Center for Educational Research in Science, Math, and Engineering and Technology, which is institutionalizing the ACEPT project when the NSF funding ends in 2000.
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