Well done!  I am a high school teacher and helping guide some potential educators early in their college education this summer through an experience similar to this.  I would love to learn more about how you prepare/guide/reward the teacher/mentors for their expertise and time and how you create pairings.

Thanks! I have specific schools that I have worked with over the past 5 years during which time we have grown the program. We meet with the mentor teachers on a regular basis in order to review our expectations and the ways in which the mentors can reach those with their mentees. We pay a stipend to mentors (which this grant supports) in order to reward them for their expertise and time. Over time, we have found that some mentors are extremely strong in this role and are committed to working with new mentees in subsequent years. If you need any information or if I can assist you in any way, please feel free to reach out to me at maurb@sacredheart.edu 

Hello BioMeTeam,

Any way that you can motivate discipline-specific students to reach is super important! What do you do the recruit these STEM discipline students to teach?

Cheers,

Anne

We speak to all biology and math majors. Some have considered teaching. Others haven't. We are also now working with admissions so that students hear these options as they choose to attend Sacred Heart. It's not always an easy process.  

Very nice project! It is so important to place Scholars in schools early in the program so they can "try out" teaching and experience the classroom well before their student teaching semester. Do the students teach in their junior year, or is this year only observation or both? How do you select your mentor teachers - are you able to select the mentors you want to work with and match them with your Scholars (ideally)? Do the Scholars stay with the same mentor teachers for student teaching or are they placed with a different mentor teacher and different school? Thanks!

Thanks! We actually place them in one school district during their junior year and another in their senior year so as to give them a variety of experiences. They begin by observing, then work with small groups and eventually teach lessons beginning later in their junior year. We do select the mentors that we want to work with and after the first year they are involved can judge whether they are totally committed to our mission, so to speak. We then match them with our Noyce Scholars so that it is most beneficial all around. 

Great support system for preservice teachers before they begin the formal student teaching process. Do you have data on the success of students who participate and those who do not? are they more likely to be more successful in their clinical placements? higher scores on content exams (PRAXIS), or other measures?

Thank you for highlighting that there's so much more to teaching than it appears - all the little details. And then for the Noyce fellows, they are going into schools that demand even more from our STEM teachers than typical teacher education programs can prepare them for. So great that you are supporting your teachers in this way.

Great approach to developing new STEM teachers. One of the pre-service students in your video spoke to the issues that we have seen - showing STEM majors how to become a great teacher.  How has your process affected recruiting and retention of pre-service teachers?  Seems like it should have been positively impacted.