Feature: MSU's College of Education--A Mecca for Learning to Teach
Celebrating its 50th anniversary, the College of Education leads the nation in innovative and rigorous programs to prepare teachers for the 21st Century.
A few years ago, Anne Lewis was on the track to becoming a doctor. Her strong high school academic record had landed her a spot at Lyman Briggs, the residential science school at MSU, and the opportunity to pursue a degree in chemistry. Then things began to change. She found herself looking forward to those times when she helped friends write their papers and worked with the children’s choir at her church.
Zoom forward three years, and Anne Lewis is front and center in an eighth grade language arts class at Otto Middle School in Lansing, discussing the finer points of English composition, and nearing the end of a remarkable internship year.
“It’s been a great experience,” Lewis says of her internship. “I’m in a downtown school with kids from every socioeconomic level you can imagine, and I’d like to think I’ve thrived. To be able to have that kind of confidence going into a job interview or my first teaching job is fantastic.”
Anne Lewis is one of a new generation of teacher education candidates at MSU. She is not an undergraduate anymore, but an alumna. She is not spending a few weeks in a classroom as part of her training, but two semesters teaching, learning and finding herself as a teacher. She is part of MSU’s five-year teacher education program that has emerged over the years as a model for preparing quality teachers for the challenging world of teaching in the 21st Century.
The College of Education is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year, and throughout its history one of its proudest traditions and deepest commitments has been the development of innovative teacher preparation programs.
Lewis is the first to tell you that the internship year, like the undergraduate work that prepared her for it, is a challenge. First of all, admission into the program in the junior year is highly competitive, and then once admitted students must complete their degrees before they’re eligible to intern.
For Professor Tom Bird, there are a number of elements that make MSU’s teacher preparation program special. From the introductory course onward, the faculty asks prospective teachers to grasp the extensive research on classroom teaching and learning, and use it to examine and reconstruct the strong and sometimes entrenched – but not necessarily valid – conceptions of teaching, learning, subject matter, and students they have formed in their long experience as students.
Field experience begins early, no later than the junior year. Teacher candidates take their courses in a strict sequence that enables them to build on prior learning and to relate what they see and do in schools with the theory and research they are studying.
“There are these threads throughout the program that keep coming to the fore,” Bird says. “You are always teaching diverse youngsters and they always will respond differently to your teaching. You always have to get information about how the students are responding, and you have to get better at pre-assessment to figure out what they think now and assessment later to figure out what they learned and didn’t learn to guide your instruction.
“So we’re trying to get people to move to an image of teaching as a cycle of planning, teaching, assessment and reflection.”
By the time teacher candidates reach the internship, he says, they are in a much better position to learn from the experience. “Experience isn’t an obvious teacher. Some people have 20 years of experience, and some people have their first year over and over again. We want our students to be people who go out into the field and acquire 20 years of well-considered experience.”
The internship continues to develop that cycle as the MSU field staff and collaborating teachers mentor and work with interns to help them reflect and learn. “Our mindset is that this is not a demonstration,” says Sharon Schwille, assistant chairperson of the Dept. of Teacher Education. “This is a learning time. Yes, you will be doing things, and yes, we’re going to be watching you, but we’re going be working with you, co-planning and co-teaching with you in a way that we can teach you some of these things that good teachers know and do. By the end of the year, the student will have had experiences and learned enough so that they can go into that classroom in the fall and succeed.”
Lewis says she grew and matured every year she was in the program, especially in understanding the nuances of learning and learners, and the nature of subject matter in relation to effective teaching.
Early in the program, Lewis took Professor Chris Wheeler’s TE 250 course on diverse learners and it was a turning point. Throughout the semester, the class explored the dimensions of race, class, gender and economic disadvantage and inequality. Wheeler pushed Lewis and her classmates to seek out schools where students had backgrounds that didn’t mirror their own. It was a suggestion Lewis took to heart.
She taught at an inner city school for students who had been expelled. “After doing those readings in the 250 class and teaching at that school, I knew that serving economically challenged kids and kids in urban settings was important to me and what I wanted to do,” she says.
During her internship, she says she always felt supported and challenged to engage with students and put the theories and practices she learned at MSU to use in the classroom. For her, it’s hard to imagine not having an entire year in a classroom as part of her education. There is simply so much value in the experience. At the beginning, she was able to see and experience what it takes to develop those all-important relationships with students that set the tone for the entire school year. She was able to construct and implement lesson plans and alter them over an entire school year, as well as assess student learning and help both high achievers and those who were struggling.
Reflection on learning from this experience came as part of her continual meeting with her MSU field instructors and collaborating teacher, and through the graduate courses that are part of the internship experience.
Over the year, she was also able to grow and develop in her interactions with students. There were times, she says, when she faced situations where a student was rude or uncooperative. She learned to handle those situations and then move on, maintaining her focus on students’ educational needs.
Having the time to work through difficulties was essential. “If you have a short period of time in that classroom, you’re not getting a full view because you are going to meet that resistance from your students and you’re not going to have time to work through those problems,” she says.
And from the first day, Lewis felt she was a valued part of the faculty, whose responsibilities to students were as important as those of the other teachers. “I was welcomed on the staff. I wasn’t just an intern who was going to be there for a short time. My contributions really mattered. The staff was very adamant that interns were an integral part of the school.”
Throughout the years, the program’s standing among superintendents in Michigan and elsewhere has remained strong.
Robert Spencer, superintendent of the Lakeview School District in Battle Creek, said that there is a clear difference in the type of student coming out of MSU’s program.
“The MSU students have that year of maturity under their belts, and they bring a level of confidence that results in them having a smoother adjustment in that first-year classroom,” Spencer says. “There is no question that students out of MSU’s five-year program have fewer classroom management difficulties during those critical first years because they have that extra year of experience.
“We feel that where we can, we are very much interested in hiring people from Michigan State.”
Lewis is not surprised to hear such comments. She feels that confidence and can’t wait to start teaching on her own. For her, as with many of her fellow interns, the opportunity to spend a year in the classroom has been invaluable – an experience she is convinced will serve her well in the years ahead.
“I have been with these kids every single day,” she says. “I have been a real part of their lives, and I have been able to be myself in class, and realize who I am and who MSU has helped me to become. I don’t think I’d be nearly as excited about being in the kinds of school settings where we really need strong teachers if I hadn’t had this fifth-year internship experience.”
Victor Inzunzais the College of Education’s public information officer, and author of Years of Achievement: A Short History of the College of Education at Michigan State University (2002). To order a book, log onto the college’s Web site at ed-web3.educ.msu.edu/college/anniversary/orderform.htm.
COLLEGE A NATIONAL POWER IN EDUCATION
If teacher education were an intercollegiate sport, then MSU would be a dynasty.
For as long as U.S. News and World Report has been ranking graduate programs in elementary and secondary education, the College of Education has been No. 1.
“Our high rankings are a tribute to the quality of our faculty and the nature of their research and teaching,” said Dean Carole Ames. “Education is a top national priority, so it’s more important than ever that we provide our graduate students with the very best programs and opportunities, and we’re clearly doing that.
“We’re proud of the rankings in that they reflect our enduring commitment to excellence.”
What is even more impressive is that elementary and secondary education are only two of the College of Education programs ranked among the top 10. In all, the college has seven programs in the latest rankings: rehabilitation counseling and curriculum and instruction (both ranked No. 2 in the country), higher education administration (No.4), educational psychology (No. 6), and education policy (No. 9).
TIME-HONORED TRADITION
MSU has been preparing teachers for a long time. The university offered its first course in education in 1902 through the Women's Division, which included such things as sewing and cooking. A program for teacher certification was established in 1906. The program grew rapidly, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, and a key component was practical field experience in K-12 classrooms. Bridging theory and practice remains a strong component of the current five-year teacher preparation program.