Education Week - August 24, 2022 - 24

19
Why I Left Teaching
20
I'm Putting the Joy
Back in Teaching
21
Letters to
The Editor
Higher Education to K-12:
We Need You Now
An urgent message from a teacher educator
By Leah Wasburn-Moses
T
eacher educators want our K-12
colleagues to know: We are desperate,
too. During the pandemic, we lost
nearly all our valuable field placements
and many of our hard-earned district
partnerships. Fewer college students
are choosing to enter the teaching
profession, and those that do lack hands-on experience.
We have the same goals that you do: Attack the teacher
shortage, diversify the educator workforce, address what
is being termed " learning loss " in schools, partner on new
initiatives. Recent research has shown us what we need to do
to move forward in these areas, but neither higher education
nor K-12 has the capacity to do it alone.
For example, let's consider the teacher shortage along
with the immediate and continuing imperative to diversify
the educator workforce. We know that teacher pipelines
established in and for schools can address these challenges.
Home-grown teachers-that is, teachers who work in the
communities where they themselves were educated-are
more effective, more diverse, and stay longer than ones who
are " transplanted. " Districts and universities can partner on
recruitment, field placement, coaching, and special programming
that can support home-grown teacher pipelines.
Taking a close look at field placement and student-teaching
is perhaps the most important way that K-12 partnerships
with higher education can advance the profession. Not only
can such partnerships help meet a multitude of school goals,
but they can also serve as extended
hiring interviews.
Investing time and energy to
ensure a close match between
teacher-candidates' desires for future
placements can also boost teacher quality
and retention. Every candidate should be
placed with an effective teacher instead of
with any willing volunteer in the school.
Administrative teams setting expectations
These partnerships can also offer valuable learning
opportunities to teacher-candidates who may have been
unable to participate in traditional field experiences during
COVID-19. For example, multiple teacher-candidates could
collaborate within one school to collect actionable data in a
selected subject area. They could staff before- or after-school
24 | EDUCATION WEEK | August 24, 2022 | www.edweek.org/opinion
WASBURN-MOSES is a professor of educational
psychology at Miami University and the author
of Student Teaching: Past, Present, and Future
(Lexington, 2020). Her on-campus alternative school
model, Campus Mentors, has won national recognition.
for field placement (for example, assist with schoolwide data
collection, serve as reading tutors, help staff tutoring labs) in
collaboration with university personnel offers another way
that partnerships can benefit mutually and create a strong
link between coursework and fieldwork.
Many districts are using a significant portion of their
COVID-19-relief monies on tutoring, and much of that work
is, in fact, being performed by teacher-candidates. This use
of teacher-candidates for tutoring is a move in the right direction
for addressing pandemic-related academic disruptions.
School and university personnel should work together to
align tutors' assignments and the teacher-prep curriculum,
as well as create structures for coaching that support both
teacher quality and outcomes for students.
programs. They could also assist older students in navigating
online coursework or provide Tier II (small-group, targeted)
support in various areas.
It might be easy to fall into the old habit of simply placing
a set number of teacher-candidates in specific schools for the
required hours needed to complete assignments. Instead,
why not think of these relationships in new ways, to create
win-win opportunities for the growth of the candidates and
the mission of schools.
Here are several ways to make that happen:
Concentrate teacher-candidates in one school or district,
with the intent of addressing a specific school need or goal.
Offer each teacher-candidate regular coaching from both
K-12 and higher education personnel.
Why not think of these
relationships in new
ways, to create win-win
opportunities for the growth
of the candidates and the
mission of schools.
Make deliberate connections between field duties and
assignments, with higher education personnel supporting
each individual candidate.
Place teacher-candidates with teacher-mentors who have
demonstrated effectiveness in the classroom.
K-12 and higher education already have many overlapping
needs, and the new pressure to support the teacher workforce
and address the academic fallout coming out of the pandemic
only makes collaboration more urgent. Research has
shown that careful partnerships can result in a more effective
teacher-recruitment process and can ease shortages, as well
as increase teacher quality and retention. School leaders
should reach out to area colleges and universities with clear
school goals as a first step in developing new structures and
opportunities that will benefit both parties.
Feodora Chiosea/iStock/Getty
http://www.edweek.org/opinion
Education Week - August 24, 2022

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