Site Based Courses for Pre-Service Teachers

Traditionally, pre-service teachers often find that the work that they do in their education courses is disconnected from their student teaching experience.

At the Graham and Parks School, an alternative public school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the teachers are engaged in a collaboration with the Graduate College of Education at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. The teachers co-developed a course for pre-service teachers which meets on-site after school. This video profiles the course and describes the process through which it was developed.

The video is designed to encourage its audience - faculty and administrators in education programs - to implement similar site-based courses at their own professional development schools. Another goal is help college and university education faculty find new ways to recognize, utilize and formalize the contributions that practicing teachers can make to graduate and undergraduate teacher education programs.

Working with Prof. Judy Clark of the Graduate College of Education at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, the teachers addressed areas where they felt that interns coming to their school needed extra assistance, such as: classroom management, finding curriculum resources, integrating lessons into an overarching unit, working with special needs students, and organizing a learning environment. Sessions of the course are illustrated on video, along with interviews with Prof. Clark, the interns, the on-site coordinator, and the teachers involved in the course. The voices of the participants, rather than narration, provide most of the commentary.

Teachers describe the unexpected benefits of participating in this collaboration with the University: having an insightful, relaxed dialog about the issues they feel are most important in teaching and learning. They state the importance of having this conversation about their teaching practice in a supportive and collegial atmosphere, distinct from the usual "crisis-management" discussions that normally take place in schools. The student teachers in the video share ways that the course has been successful in helping them bridge the gap between theory and practice.

Run Time: 24:14

This program is part of a series of videotapes produced under the TEAMS-BC project, funded in part by the National Science Foundation.

Principal Investigator: Irwin I. Shapiro, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Co-Principal Investigator: Kay Merseth, Harvard University Graduate School of Education

TEAMS-BC Dissemination Committee: Jeanne Bamberger, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Judith Clark, University of Massachusetts - Boston; Linda French, Wheelock College; Alex Griswold, Harvard University; Joan Lukas, University of Massachusetts - Boston

Video production: Producer/Videographer: Alex Griswold; Co-Producer: Clive Grainger; Editor: Julie Kahn; On-Line Editor: Martha Clarke; Narrator, Anna Lewicke