Revised Pre-Practicum Guidelines are out! Public comment is open until March 4, 2018.
The latest version of proposed guidelines for educator preparation programs is now open for public comment. The draft Guidelines for Pre-Practicum for Teachers (sic) and cover letter contains specific recommendations related to observations of a candidate (student teacher) in a PK-12 setting and the use of gateway assessments. The proposed guidelines and other DESE educator preparation program guidelines are also available here.
The proposed Guidelines for Pre-Practicum for Teachers does not contain any minimum requirements for number of hours, types of activities or diversity of school and/or student populations as part of the pre-practicum field experiences.
The Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) previously provided public comment with specific recommendations that candidates should have experiences observing, engaging and practicing in classrooms that cover a wide range of student ages, grade levels, student learning characteristics (e.g. special education, English learner, high needs), community socio-economic status and school accountability level.
Public comment through a survey is open until March 4, 2018. You can access the survey here. If you want to send additional comments that don’t fit in the survey tool, we recommend sending your comments via email to edprep@doe.mass.edu.
ICYMI The DESE released a set of proposed guidelines for the pre-practicum experiences in educator preparation programs in Fall 2017. We have the links to the first round of proposals here.
For the mortals among our readers, “pre-practicum” refers to the coursework, assessments and other related requirements of a teacher preparation program that occur before an aspiring educator begins a formal student teacher period (or practicum).