Juliet Curci, senior director of school and community partnerships for Temple University’s College of Education, wants two things: for all teacher-candidates to have a high-quality student-teaching experience; and for the College to have a deeper impact on the schools and communities with which it works.

To achieve those goals, she knew she’d have to redesign the College’s approach to student teaching. So this fall, she launched a pilot with four central elements:

• Student teachers from Temple were placed at partner schools in cohorts of three to five;
• Student teachers and their cooperating teachers and coaches went through a one-day training on the St. Cloud co-teaching model prior to the start of the school year;
• Student teachers received weekly support from their coaches, who each support one cohort of candidates and are expected to spend extensive time in the schools observing and supporting the candidates; and
• Coaches taught a weekly seminar course for their cohort of students at the partner school sites.

Curci had 13 teacher-candidates participate in pilot this fall; she hopes to continue the pilot in the spring semester with an additional 15 candidates. She’s received an enthusiastic response and is excited to continue to build out the pilot.

I talked to her earlier this fall about what she has hoping to achieve through the pilot and how that work might influence student-teaching at Temple more broadly. To listen, stream below:

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