The Pekin Professional Development School, in partnership with Illinois State University, allows education majors the opportunity for a year long internship. The purpose of this program is to create an exemplary learning environment that embraces innovation and the integration of the best practices for children, interns, and faculties in a technologically oriented society.
The Professional Development School focuses on many steps to educating future teachers. These are the main focuses:
• Problem-based Learning
• Technology-rich learning environment
• Collaborative Instructional strategies
The interns are able to take part in the first days of school. They attend district and school retreats with their mentor, before the school year even starts. This mentor will be the cooperating teacher the interns will work with during their student teaching. Interns also help their mentor teacher prepare for the first days of school, and they are there to welcome the students into their new classroom. They are given the opportunity to see how instructional practices and management plans were put into place and how effective they were by the middle of the school year.
During the interns’ first semester, they split their time between classroom involvement and their last four ISU method courses. Halfway through the first semester, they are also able to move into a new classroom. This gives them the experience of teaching from various grade levels and also seeing different teaching styles.
During the interns’ second semester, they return to their original classroom where the internship began. Since a relationship has already been established between the intern and the class, there is an immediate transition into teaching. This experience has allowed me to see and implement a variety of instructional strategies during the course of an entire year. It has been a truly challenging and rewarding experience.
This internship is split into four phases. During phase I, I was placed in a third grade classroom. I helped get the classroom ready for the first day of school, and I welcomed the children to school on a meet the teacher night. I also assisted in teaching lessons to individual, small, and whole group.
During phase II, I moved to a sixth grade classroom. I continued to assist teaching individual, small, and whole group. I also used a lot of technology in this classroom. I gained experience using a Smart Board, which I found very helpful. I also graded papers and recorded them on an online grade book. This phase also gave me the opportunity to take part in parent/teacher conferences for both sixth and third grade.
During these first two phases, I was able to gain almost 300 hours of classroom time and also completed my 12 credit hours of methods courses. Being in the classroom allowed me to see first hand what would be expected of me during student teaching.
During my last two phases, Phases III and IV, I returned to the third grade classroom. Since I already new my students and the teacher, I began taking over the planning and instruction of one subject a week starting my second week back. This allowed me to have a great deal of time to try different management techniques and teaching strategies to find what works for me. The most rewarding experience of all is knowing that I will be, without a doubt, one of the most prepared graduates to walk into my first year of teaching and for that I am proud to have been an intern in the Professional Development School.
