The winter schedule will last from January to Spring Break in your second placement. You will
follow your same daily schedule (~20 hours a week). During your student teaching you will
begin with some observation and then quickly be introduced to teaching or coteaching
small lessons. This gradual release model of professional development works well to scaffold teacher
candidates growth as an emerging teacher.
Increasing Responsibilities: Starting after Spring Break, you’ll be spending all day in your
placement. Each week, you will increase your teaching responsibilities. At secondary, this could
be assuming full responsibility for 1 to 2 classes (or more). At elementary, this could be teaching
one or two subjects, or whole units. The models of increasing responsibility for teaching may be
different in each classroom or school. You will spend 11 fulltime (40 hour) weeks in your class.
Full-Time Teaching: The TC should take primary responsibility for the planning and be the lead
teacher and assessor for multiple weeks of the placement. During this time the TC will assume
the majority of the responsibilities of running a classroom. This includes full day teaching
(co-teaching is acceptable), planning, grading, parent communication, supervision duties, and
school activity involvement. Your culminating experience will be great preparation for your own
classroom.
Observations and Evaluation:
During the WinterSpring Placement (Jan. to June) you will have 6 formal observations (3 from
your Cooperating Teacher (CT) and 3 from your University Supervisor (US)). The first formal
observation will be the with the US and CT observing together, so they can calibrate their scores.
Details on Formal observations can be found on the MAT Teacher Candidate Canvas Site. The
Spring placement will end with a Team Evaluation and the Student Teaching Summary Report
with the TC, CT, and US. Details on the Team Evaluation can be found on the MAT Teacher
Candidate Canvas Site.
