As part of the process to obtain a teaching credential from the CTC (Commission on Teacher Credentialing), candidates are required to complete at least 600 hours of clinical practice.  In August, I will start an apprenticeship program called Student Teaching, to gain experience working in the classrooms of a 1st grade class and 4th grade class.  During my Student Teaching, I will be working as a Teacher’s Aide assisting Mentor Teachers in the classroom part-time for the first few months.  Then, over the following months, I will eventually be working in the classroom full-time, culminating in a period where I will have the opportunity to do some solo-teaching.  

While I am looking forward to this experience, I’m sad that this opportunity isn’t economically feasible for all teachers-in-training because this Student Teaching program is unpaid.  Instead there is another pathway, the Teacher Internship, where candidates work full-time as the Teacher of Record in a classroom.  This means that the teacher candidate works without the supervision of a mentor teacher and operates as the primary teacher in the classroom.  Intern teachers earn a steady salary, and in a recent informal poll in a Facebook Group for Aspiring Teachers asking whether members preferred Student Teaching versus an Internship, most preferred the Internship route.

As someone coming into the teaching profession without a lot of classroom experience, I’m grateful for the opportunity to observe another experienced teacher in action.  In fact, there is an instructional approach where students learn by observing the teacher in action, a step in the cognitive apprenticeship process called Modeling.  As a substitute teacher, there have been days I wondered how I could have approached a situation differently and wished there was someone I could ask.  Oftentimes, I would write feedback for the classroom teacher to let him/her know how the day went.  But this communication was often one way, since I was subbing across different school districts and across different grades.  While I’ve been able to bounce a few ideas and scenarios off professors and other classmates in my teacher credentialing program, the feedback is often generic because every classroom is different.  But, that changes in August, and I will get to work shoulder to shoulder with another teaching professional as situations arise and I think that experience will be invaluable.

The good news is hope is around the corner for Student Teachers to get paid.  There is a bill, AB238, introduced earlier this year in January 2023 called the California Student Teacher Support Grant Program.  This bill, which appears to be progressing on Trackbill, would make it possible for Student Teachers to get paid the substitute teaching rate.  If this gets enacted, I think many more aspiring teachers will be able to choose the Student Teaching pathway and benefit from the experience of other teachers.