Passing the Torch: Performance Assessment Benchmarks for Preservice Teachers and Mentor Teacher Training

The health of our nation and the strength of our medical profession depend on knowledge and competency developed through training in the classroom, internship and residency. Likewise, our intellectual vigor and national strength depend on competent and successful teachers developed through training in the classroom, internship and residency. A strong teaching profession requires highly qualified teachers who are prepared for the rigors of the classroom and who continue their professional development through the support of mentors. This article describes a project that utilizes Charlotte Danielson's book Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching to create performance assessment instruments for interns and residents within a field-based model that is a joint effort of public school teachers and university professors. Using a trainer of trainer's model 22 teachers and 6 professors prepared 200 mentors to use the new performance assessment instruments. The partnership of a university and a public school district is one approach to strengthen the teaching profession by ensuring that preservice teachers are qualified for entry into the profession and supported in the classroom by mentors. After developing and piloting a field-based program for three years the Center for Professional Teacher Education (CPTE) at the University of Texas at Arlington implemented a one-hunderd percent field-based teacher preparation program in the fall of 1996. Program Structure With the completion of three years work toward a bachelor's degree including prerequisite education courses, students enter into a two semester commitment--one semester internship and one semester residency. Their assignments are made through an interview process that involves public school teachers and site coordinators (a teacher that oversees mentors, interns, and residents within a school and serves as liaison to the university). A professor is assigned to each school to work with site coordinators, mentor teachers, and university students. Course work continues throughout the internship and residency and includes research-based methods and strategies, classroom management, school culture, reading, technology, and diversity. The university courses are taught by the professors in the public schools, with the exception of the technology course. Guidelines Traditional student teaching ranges from 10-18 weeks. Our students are committed to 36 weeks -- 18 in internship and 18 in residency. Another major difference between the traditional student teaching model and the field-based model is that the internship and residency follow the public school calendar, not the university calendar. This ensures that each preservice teacher experiences first hand both the opening of school and the closing of the school year, although the order may be reversed if they enter internship in January and begin residency in August. Furthermore, each preservice teacher's course work must fit the 50-50-50 rule set as an expectation by the Texas Education Agency: fifty per cent of the class time is with the professor, fifty per cent of the class time is with students and teachers actively involved in instructional activities in public school classrooms, and fifty per cent of the university students' grade is connected to time and activities that take place in the public school classroom. Internship and Residency During the internship university students assist the teacher, work with small groups of students, prepare and deliver lessons, document time on task, gather data about the classroom environment, and keep a journal as well as other duties. Each intern is required to develop a portfolio for review by the mentor, the professor, and their cohorts. The portfolio includes a resume, educational philosophy, teaching artifacts, reflective commentary, selected examples of student work, formal and informal evaluations, list of contacts for networking, recommendations from teachers, and items of choice, i. …