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05 RH18
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Archive | Experts Online
October 25, 2005
DH 05 RH18
Contact: Russ Hudson,
Media Relations Coordinator
(310) 243-2455/2001
rhudson@csudh.edu
State Hands CSUDH $1 Million Grant to Help Teach Teachers
The Funded Intern Program, administered by Sharon Russell, professor,
Teacher Education, has received a $1 million grant from the California
Department of Education’s California Commission on Teacher
Credentialing.
The primary purpose of the grant to is to pay CSUDH students who are earning
state teaching credentials for the work they do in the classrooms in the school
districts where they are teacher-interns. An internship is a fully paid position
in a public school and may be one or two years long. During that time, the interns
are the teachers of record.
The state began the program because many had to drop out of student
teaching when they couldn’t afford to work that long without pay. The program received
impetus when the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB, often referred to as “nickleby”)
Act was passed in 2001. It dictated that teachers must be “highly qualified” in
the subjects they teach. It was left to the states to determine what constitutes “highly
qualified” and, in part, California chose to require credentialing,
with a deadline for existing but uncredentialed teachers at the
end of the 2005-2006 academic year.
“When nickleby was passed, a lot of teachers were working on emergency
permits,” explains Russell. “They had to take coursework to become
interns. Interning is required before acquiring credentials. The school districts,
the university, and the state saw that this was a bottleneck that a lot of teachers
couldn’t get through, so they set up the pre-intern program to get teachers
to the point that they could qualify as interns.” Also pushing the need
for teachers, she said, was the 1997 decree by California that class sizes be
reduced. In addition, there was a high demand for math and science teachers at
the same time, “so at that point the state established the funded program
for interns … it became clear that neither the school districts
nor the university could supply the money for paid internships
without additional funding. It was then the state allocated funds
to the CCTC to set up teacher development programs, called Funded
Projects.
“There were three types of Funded Projects,” Russell explains. “The
Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment, the intern program and
the pre-intern. We ran pre-intern and intern programs at Dominguez Hills. It
was unusual to run a pre-intern program. That was usually done in the school
district.”
“It worked well,” Russell says. “It was a good pipeline for
the university and it helped the state decrease emergency permits dramatically.
With the federal nickleby mandate, the school districts were really under the
gun to get teachers who were interns and not under emergency permits. That’s
why, when we were working toward nickleby compliance just after
it was passed, our number of interns at CSUDH just skyrocketed.
We had 661 interns. That gave me a few more gray hairs.”
The internship program this year includes about 350 teachers from
elementary and secondary schools getting their credentials. Over
the years, Russell said, Dominguez Hills has helped about 3,000
teachers get credentialed.
Three types of internships are available: district, university and individualized.
“A school district may have an approved program where they train candidates
to become teachers. At the end, these people will hold a credential good in the
state of California. They take courses in the school district that are taught
by district personnel. They get salary point credits, but they do not receive
a transcript or academic credits. That’s a district internship,” Russell
says.
“Whereas, the university internship is through a partnership between
the school district and the university, and while that person is teaching in
the school district, they are taking coursework in an approved program at the
university. They will get academic credit and a valid California credential.
An added thing to that, by the way, is we are an NCATE [National Council for
Accreditations of Teacher Education] university. If they go to another state
that is also an NCATE state, their credential will automatically be accepted.”
The Individualized Internship is designed for those who have already completed
some elements of their teacher preparation.
“We have in the last five years in our program here at Dominguez Hills,” Russell
says proudly, “a 94 percent retention rate. That is, 94 percent
of the interns who go into a classroom stay in the teaching profession.
That is compared to the national average of about 50 percent of
teachers leaving the classroom by the five-year mark.
“Part of the reason for that,” she explains, “is in California
we have a Beginning Teachers Support Program, which is now called
an Induction Program. You have to do this program to get the last part of your
credential, which is called a Clear Credential. In the Induction Program, in
the first two years that a teacher begins to work in a school district, they
are paired with a mentor. He or she is observed teaching, must prepare a self-improvement
plan, and the experienced teacher mentoring him or her gives feedback and helps
with learning the ropes. People who go through this program tend to stay. And
some of our people are teaching in some of the poorest, hardest-to-staff schools
in the county.
“Our internship program here is pragmatic as well as theoretical, and demanding
at the same time.” Russell points out. “We teach them what they need
to know straight on, but then we also provide a support program for long-term
growth. We offer classroom management, for example, as one of the first classes
they take. When they get a credential, they tend to come back for the showcases
we do, in social studies and others in literacy, which we’ve done through
the intern grant. They come back and get their master’s degrees
with us.
“What we try to teach them, to show them, is that we’re all rational,
problem-solving individuals. So that even our very beginning teachers are told, ‘The
power to do this is within you, we’re just helping you to find the answers.’ What
we hope is that when our teachers teach their students, they instill
in them that same sense of resilience and focus.”
California State University, Dominguez Hills
University Communications & Public Affairs
Welch Hall, B-363
1000 E. Victoria St.
Carson, CA 90747
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