COLLEGE PARK, MD (September, 2014) The National Education Association (NEA), the largest professional organization of public school teachers in the United States, is highlighting the Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership's MCERT program as an exemplar of experience-rich teacher residencies arising from partnerships between colleges of education and school districts.
Appearing on the NEA's website, the citation is accompanied by a video featuring MCERT Director Dr. Ebony Terrell Shockley, Principal Mark Covington and Mentor Teacher Celeste McGill of Samuel Ogle Middle School (Prince George's County Public Schools), and MCERT residents Rebecca Rothstein, Maria Ball, and Sara Hudson:
The Maryland Master of Education with Certification Program (MCERT), a post-baccalaureate teacher residency program in which candidates take a full-year internship at a public school concurrent with graduate coursework, requires candidates to demonstrate mastery of subject matter before admission and to apprentice with a practicing teacher while studying and practicing content pedagogy and theory. At the residency's conclusion, candidates demonstrate both subject-matter and pedagogical expertise through required certification assessments and a pre-service classroom-based performance assessment.
"The best way to ensure that every teacher is 'profession-ready' from their first day as teacher-of-record is for preparation programs to incorporate teacher residencies that go beyond what most consider the capstone student teaching experience," the NEA says on its website.
MCERT's success is especially germane to the newest findings of the Phi Delta Kappa / Gallup survey on education a well-established poll now in its 46th year which reports that most Americans favor longer residencies that promote better teacher training. Forty-four percent of respondents said that teachers should practice under an experienced teacher for at least one year before becoming a teacher-of-record, and 27 percent recommended two years. These findings reflect a larger trend in favor of greater overall rigor in teacher preparation a trend that, the NEA's support for MCERT would suggest, the College of Education is well ahead of.
Dr. Ebony Terrell Shockley is a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership. She directs the MCERT program and the Office of Teacher and Leader Education. Her scholarship focuses on disciplinary and digital literacy (particularly in secondary science education), sociolinguistics and dialect education, and cultural factors affecting student outcomes on formal and informal assessments.
Click here to visit the NEA's "Teacher Residencies" webpage.
Click here to read an analysis of the new, comprehensive PDK/Gallup poll and its implications for teacher prep programs at Emily Richmond's Education Writers Association blog.
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