3.2 Quality clinical experiences, in the context of documented and effective partnerships with P12 school districts

Early childhood, elementary, SPED teacher candidates in the old program, those completing in 2020 (with some still in 2021), complete thirty hours in early-level field experiences, which exceed state requirements, spread across three courses: 1) 62-211: Observation and Activity in the Elementary School; 2) 62-356: Teaching Reading/Language Arts in the Elementary School; and 3) 62-410: Elementary School Social Studies. More detailed information about these field experiences can be found by reviewing Table 4: Northwest Teacher Field Experiences Crosswalk, which outlines all candidate field experiences. Syllabi for these (and all other education courses at Northwest) can be found in the Northwest AAQEP Canvas site.

Middle, secondary, and K-12 teacher candidates in the old program likewise complete thirty hours of early-level field experience, beginning with the 61-260: Practicum I course (which has now been phased out and is no longer offered). In collaboration with Maryville Public Schools, teacher candidates completed twenty-four of the thirty required hours observing a cooperating teacher in their grade and content area. The remaining six early-level field experiences hours were earned in a diverse learning environment with our urban partner, the Independence School District, in Independence, Missouri. Northwest provided bus transportation for our teacher candidates to Truman High School, where candidates toured the school, heard from the principal on current issues in education, and engaged in authentic teaching and learning in a diverse high school. The highlight of the experience involved candidates teaching a lesson collaboratively with building teachers using the co-teaching model. Qualitative feedback from the first-year teacher surveys have indicated this rich and diverse experience was valuable to candidates, and this event as a result has been modified and included in the new program as well (as described below).

Early childhood, Elementary and special education, teacher candidates complete their mid-level field experience in three courses: 62-407: Language Arts Practicum, 62-456 Practicum and Seminar in Elementary School Reading, and 62-420 Content Teaching in the Elementary School. Teacher candidates spend two hours daily over the course of seven weeks delivering instruction: approximately seventy total hours of direct instruction with students. Mentor teachers provide daily feedback verbally and in writing. Additionally, the faculty member teaching the course observes weekly and provides feedback to help hone teacher candidates' skills prior to student teaching.

Middle school, secondary, and K-12 candidates in the old program complete their mid-level field experience as part of their 61-360 Practicum II class in the semester prior to student teaching (the last sections of this course will be offered in the 2019-20 academic year). Teacher candidates are required to complete a total of forty-five field experience hours in local and regional school districts. We place students across a wide range: throughout Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. Our clinical placements are listed and fully described in, Table 2: Northwest B-12 School and Community Partnerships. Candidates spend fifteen of the forty-five hours observing and teaching over the course of the semester in local schools and then complete the additional thirty hours over the course of a "week out" experience. For this, they are excused from campus courses and activities so that they can spend a full five-day week (in the fall trimester, the first week of November; in the spring trimester, the first week of April) observing and teaching with an assigned mentor teacher in a local school.

Generally, when possible, they complete the "week out" experience with the same teacher in the same classroom with whom and where they will be completing student teaching in the subsequent semester. Through this process, candidates forge long-term relationships with the cooperating teacher, school district personnel, and students where the candidate will be student teaching and to gain some experience as well in the opposite semester in the same setting to better understand how the school and classroom operate over the course of an entire school year.

During their mid-level clinical experiences, all candidates are evaluated using the MEES Teacher Candidate Assessment Rubric.

Detailed information about candidate field experiences in the new programs (as well as the old programs and the advanced programs) can be found by reviewing Table 4: Northwest Teacher Field Experiences Crosswalk, which outlines all candidate field experiences. Further, all course syllabi for courses described below (as well as almost all other Professional Education Unit (PEU) courses) are available in the Northwest AAQEP Canvas site.

During the new undergraduate programs redesign construction, great thought was given to improving upon solid clinical experiences and finding additional resources to expand their reach, especially in our programs’ ability to provide robust, diverse clinical practice in diverse locations with diverse learners, which supports AAQEP standard 2.2. 3.2. and 3.3 they could augment the content of various courses. This meant the courses themselves would have embedded clinical experiences instead of having a couple of stand-alone courses that were dedicated to large chunks of field experience hours. As design for the courses progressed, it became clear the faculty had various rationale for wanting field experiences embedded in courses (i.e. 62-112 Developmental Foundations needed a field experience where the teacher candidates saw all of the developmental milestones a student undergoes during their lifetime as a B-12 student, thereby being a best-practice field experience).

Additionally, our faculty engaged in collaborative, active discussion through designated curricular work teams. All voices agreed that we wished to optimally redesign and continuously improve our program. Clinical experiences in the content area and grade level where the teacher candidate sought certification were important to allow illustration of various methods taught in classes (i.e. 62-215 Integrated Curriculum in the Middle and Secondary course needed to include a field experience at the grade level and in the content area the teacher candidate sought certification to allow illustration of integrating reading/writing and other cross-curricular areas, thereby being a DESE clinical experience).

Another example is 62-118 Teaching is Communication where all content and grade levels are integrated but looking at how to best meet special populations of student needs (i.e. special education students, ELL students, gifted students, various ethnicities, immigrant students, etc.). During this course, the field experience sought to illuminate various techniques and methods to help special populations of students to grow in social development as well as academic/reading/writing. Therefore, the intent of the clinical experience was to augment the teacher candidates understanding of working with special populations.

During these various experiences, of which all initial certification areas are included, the intent is to teach best-practices for meeting all students needs. Once the students migrate into the phase two courses, their clinical experiences are meant to help meet DESE clinical experience requirements and to illustrate researched theories and ideas as they transpire in high quality classrooms. Some of the classrooms are those housed in the on-campus lab school and some are experiences within local schools or suburban and urban school districts where Northwest has partnerships.

The mid-level field experiences occur at different semesters for the various certification areas, but all transpire during the second phase (semesters 5-7) of the redesigned programs. For the middle/secondary/K-12 teacher candidates, they take part in the    61-431 Practicum during semester seven, and they participate in the week-out experiences. This experience is orchestrated exactly how the Practicum field experience for this population of teacher candidates was orchestrated in the "old" program. The students are placed in the districts where they plan to do their student teaching and spend a week in the classroom observing, interacting, and teaching. This results in a total of 40 hours, but as the teacher candidates are expected to spend at least one day prior to the week-out experience within their placement to meet all of the students and the teacher, they accrue almost 50 hours within the classroom.

Middle level experiences for elementary and special education students occur during their 7th semester in 62-431 Residency Practicum course. During this course, the teacher candidate is placed in the school district where he/she will complete student teaching. During the course, the student will observe, interact, and teach with the cooperating teacher for a total of 100+ hours. This will afford the teacher candidate, the cooperating teacher, the students, and the school district personnel to establish a high-quality relationship prior to the teacher candidate completing student teaching. Additionally, this allows the teacher candidate to experience each portion of a school year calendar (i.e. how to begin a year, how to work with winter holiday, how to close a year, etc.)

Within the Early Childhood redesigned program, the mid-level experiences are found in the various practicum the teacher candidate will complete, 62-435 Primary Grades Practicum, 62-472 Early Childhood Capstone Practicum, 62-404 Practicum in Preschool, and 62-405 Practicum in Kindergarten. Each of these experiences transpires at either the Leet Center, Horace Mann Elementary, or at one of our partner schools or facilities. The experiences total 100+ hours of DESE mid-level experiences and help to prepare the teacher candidate to work with any population of students they may have in their future.

All teacher candidates, in both the old and new programs, complete a culminating sixteen-week student teaching experience in grade-appropriate and content-appropriate classroom with a cooperating teacher. This exceeds the minimum state requirement of twelve weeks in student teaching. Cooperating teachers, as mandated by the state, are required to be certified teachers in Missouri, have a master's degree, have at least three years of teaching experience and certification, and meet teacher professional performance targets. All candidates are placed in one of six hubs: Maryville, local area schools, St. Joseph, Kansas City, Omaha, or Des Moines. Concentrating candidates in hubs allows the university supervisor to be closer to candidates and to provide stronger support. A memorandum of understanding (MOU) is signed with partnering K-12 school districts who facilitate a Northwest teacher candidate(s). The MOU outlines specific expectations for both parties. For example, DESE's performance assessment for certification is the MEES.

In addition to their cooperating teacher(s), all candidates are assigned a university supervisor. Both the cooperating teacher and the university supervisor each makes at least five formative evaluations and one summative assessment of candidate's teaching over the course of the sixteen weeks, using the MEES Teacher Candidate Assessment Rubric, as described in the MEES Protocols and Forms Guide. The MEES summative scores are reported to DESE, which then constitute one measure in each program's annual APR, as reported in Table 1: Northwest Teacher & Leader Preparation Programs Summary. In order to assure consistency, university supervisors and content supervisors (see below) attend annual MEES validity and reliability training days on campus prior to the start of each fall semester.

The field experience placement office at Northwest works with our certification officer to ensure proper clinical practice configurations and support candidate retention and licensure, occurs to allow teacher candidates to be certified in the areas they are studying. Teacher candidates in the program areas of elementary, special education, and early childhood education complete a student teaching experience based on their major and additional areas of certification. For example, a teacher candidate majoring in elementary education with a concentration in social studies (an uncertifiable area) will student teach the entire sixteen weeks with the same cooperating teacher.

However, if a teacher candidate is majoring in elementary education with a minor in early childhood education, they will have two options. The first option, and the most utilized, is that the teacher candidate will student teach in a first, second, or third grade classroom for the entirety of their student teaching candidate. However, if the teacher candidate or school district request, the student teaching experience can be split into twelve weeks of an upper elementary grade and four weeks in a kindergarten through third grade.

A similar situation can occur with a teacher candidate double majoring in elementary education and special education. Typically for these teacher candidates, they will student teach in elementary education for twelve weeks and four weeks in special education. Teacher candidates in the middle, secondary, and K-12 candidates with a single content area or concentration likewise work exclusively in that content area; candidates with two content areas or concentrations work with two different cooperating teachers to gain experience teaching in both areas, sometimes splitting their time between twelve- and four-week blocks, sometimes working with both over the course of the entire sixteen weeks.

Northwest Missouri State University is collaboratively working to finalize the details for the redesigned yearlong (residential) culminating student teaching experience for Northwest's elementary teacher candidates and special education teacher candidates, which begins Fall 2020. Teacher candidates will participate in residency field experience during the seventh semester. During the seventh semester, the candidate would choose a PK-12 partner school district in one of the student teaching hubs. In addition, candidates will be engaged in coursework two days a week and engaged in clinical field experiences three days a week. This will allow the candidate to practice what he/she is currently learning in course work. In addition, a professional learning community will provide opportunities for collaboration and reflection of teaching and learning research-based practices among other teacher candidates. In semester eight of the residential student teaching experience, candidates will be placed in the same school district as semester seven.

Detailed information about candidate field experiences in the advanced programs (as well as the old and new undergraduate programs) can be found by reviewing Table 4: Northwest Teacher Field Experiences Crosswalk, which outlines all candidate field experiences. Further, all course syllabi for courses described below (as well as almost all other PEU courses) are available in the Northwest AAQEP Canvas Site. All of the advanced degrees and certifications offered at Northwest contain their own unique field experience opportunities. However, the consistent component is the assurance of completion of field experience hours.

Within the Educational Leadership Master’s degree, which results in Missouri principalship certification preparation, field experience hours are embedded throughout the program. Each course has at least 21 hours of field experience tied to specific assignments within the course. At the current time, candidates complete these experiences in their home schools and accumulate the required 300 hours for certification at the elementary or secondary level dependent on the level of his or her home school. In the future, when DESE changes their certification to K-12 leadership, these candidates will complete 200 hours of field experience at their home school, 50 hours at a school that is at a different level than their home school, and 50 hours at a location of his or her choice to meet the 300 hours required for K-12 certification.

The Reading program Master’s degree requires a total of 90 clinical practice hours, which includes both elementary and secondary experiences. These hours are embedded in a choice of two courses, 62-660: Practicum I: Diagnosis & Remediation of Reading Disabilities for Grades K-6 OR 62-650: Practicum I: Diagnosis & Remediation of Reading Disabilities for Grades K-6 AND 62-661: Practicum 2: Diagnosis & Remediation of Reading Disabilities for Grades 7-12 OR 62-651: Graduate Secondary Literacy Practicum.

Within the Counseling Master’s degree, candidates complete 300 clock hours of mandated field experience in 68-629: Field Placement in Elementary School Counseling, or 68-630 Field Placement in Secondary School Counseling. This course is the final course counselor candidates take within the program.

Within the Educational Specialist Elementary/Secondary Principal, which results in Missouri principalship certification preparation, clinical experience hours are embedded throughout the program. Each course has at least 21 hours of clinical experience tied to specific assignments within the course. At the current time, candidates complete these experiences in their home schools and accumulate the required 300 hours for certification at the elementary or secondary level dependent on the level of his or her home school. In the future, when DESE changes their certification to K-12 leadership, these candidates will complete 200 hours of field experience at their home school, 50 hours at a school that is at a different level than their home school, and 50 hours at a location of his or her choice to meet the 300 hours required for K-12 certification.

Within the Educational Specialist Superintendent, which results in Missouri superintendent certification preparation, clinical experience hours are embedded throughout the program. Each course has at least 21 hours of clinical experience tied to specific assignments within the course. At the current time, candidates complete these experiences in their home schools and accumulate the required 300 hours for certification at the central office level.

With regard to the Curriculum and Instruction M.S.Ed. and Secondary Teaching Master’s Degree, the candidates who complete these programs do not receive any additional certifications. However, the candidates still complete clinical experience hours in many of the courses. These are not reported to DESE, as there is no certification attached to these programs. See Table 4 for more information on these programs' clinical experiences.