Making student teaching work during a pandemic
When Taiesha Smith took the job as director of the College of Education’s Office of Experiential Learning a year and a half ago, she decided to modernize by making the office digital. “All forms required for field placement approval were converted into documents that could be completed online,” she said. She didn’t realize that she was creating a perfect platform to deal with the onslaught of changes and cancellations and volume of information that would soon be necessary to get out quickly during a pandemic.
In regular, non-COVID times, her office is in charge of placing students in real life teaching situations and internships throughout Georgia. She works with seven of the 20 teacher prep programs in the College. Smith and her team are responsible for matching teacher candidates and interns with the right mentor, so they can complete their clinical practice and earn credit hours toward certification.
Getting approximately 300 UGA students placed at one of more than 180 partner sites is like a giant logistics puzzle. Not only that, placements need to be in the right field among an array of choices including counseling, special education, and CABER (Center for Autism and Behavioral Education Research).