The April 17 meeting of the Board of Education Standards won’t be all fun and games with Hillsdale College. The board will also hear proposed rules to create permits for student teachers.
It’s been 30 years since my student teaching, when Dr. Krum dropped me into Leroy Klavetter’s math classroom in Brookings High School to preach the gospel of FOIL and SOHCAHTOA, but in my vague recollection, I don’t recall ever thinking, “Gee, Mr. Klavetter’s students and I would have much better educational experiences if the state made me apply for a permit before student-teaching.” My ed profs and my advisor, Dr. Vandever, did a good enough job keeping me on track.
But evidently new Education Secretary Joe Graves has decided that educators in training need one more bureaucratic hoop through which to jump for his amusement. The new rules propose one-year non-renewable permits for regular student teachers and for advanced student teachers. The advanced permit will let student teachers do their internship unsupervised and for pay if their cooperating schools fail to find certified teachers to fill positions.
Getting either permit will require sign-off by the student teachers’ universities, official transcripts showing completion of all necessary coursework, and 60 minutes of suicide awareness/prevention training. Aspirants seeking the advanced permit must also pass their pedagogy and content tests (an interesting dichotomy, reminding me of the venerable Joe Austin’s contention that pedagogy courses have no content), register for final coursework, participate in a mentor program, and adhere to the teachers’ code of ethics (wait—so student teachers don’t have to adhere to the code of ethics?).
To frost the bureaucratic cake, the Department of Education will apparently charge student teacher applicants $25 for their permits. There’s no word in the proposed rules on whether the Department of Education will credit that $25 toward the $60 teachers have to pay for their certificates, although the fiscal note from DOE says the increase in workload certification officers may experience from processing these new permits may be met with a decrease in workload from processing certification applications as applicants “will already be in the system, have some familiarity with the online certification system, and some aspects of their application will already be pre-populated or easily assessable.” (I’m dubious on that last word—did Dr. Graves mean “accessible”?)
The Department is taking comment on these new student teaching permit rules through Friday, April 14.
More government overreach. Fixing a system that isn’t broken.
That meaningless $25 charge for student teachers must be to cover the costs of background checks and licenses for concealed carry permits.
If I am reading this correctly, this has nothing to do with student teaching and everything to do with trying to fill the need for qualified teachers in SD by allowing “student teachers” to jump into the job market earlier to let schools fill needs. To my view, it ELIMINATES student teaching and puts college students in the trenches teaching earlier.
Would this have an effect on the student teacher’s ability to earn the credits for student teaching and possibly graduation?
South Dakota pays teachers the least in the nation, and is now showing its blatant disrespect for them by pushing through unworkable social studies standards that they all oppose. When this is done in the midst of a nationwide teacher shortage, the effect is obvious – we won’t have enough teachers. This is a band-aid to try to fill the labor shortage that is going to exist. It is also a strategy that is likely to backfire long-term, because student teachers who are thrown into the fire without being adequately trained in how to handle a classroom will burn out at a higher rate.
I wonder how many other “professions” have to jump through so many hoops. Do they fingerprint them and get their FBI records as well?
You know Cory, when I was hired by Ringling, a week before classes I was given a beginning Printmaking class to teach. I knew nothing about Printmaking but never the less I had to teach the class. I was literally one week ahead of the students the entire semester. Monoprints first, a woodcut, still pretty simple, an etching, much tricker although I had used acid in college, the a lithograph, beyond my means. I went to Tampa and brought in my old friend from USD who I had my thesis show with, John Timothy Pizzuto for the etching, he was working at Graphicstudio at USF. Then Patrick Lindhardt, a Minnesota boy for the lithograph. He did the prints for James Rosenquist, a North Dakota boy. Both John and Patrick ended up teaching at Ringling and John finished his career at USD. Where there’s a will there’s a way. Never taught Printmaking again. By the way I had a basketball hoop outside my studio, I shot horse continually during breaks. 28 my best of all time. Shooting through hoops is easy.
I would not have thought that the circuses would employ fellows who etch and woodcut, but upon more thinking I guess that makes sense. grudznick is a fellow Carnie, Mr. Anderson, although I’m more of a Barnum fellow myself.
Grudz, the clown college gave it up a few years ago and it was in Venice. Great graduates like Ron and Matt. I always took the hold that we should be tied to the Ringling Museum even though it’s basically Baroque and Ringling never went broke. They got in very very early on computers, animation and then movies. The Fine Art department graduates have unparalleled success in New York even though the costs of going to Ringling went nuts. So glad to be retired, because I really wanted to tell the kids to save an enormous amount of money and go to a state school like USF. I got tired of working so hard to make up the difference. Chinese students and foreign students in general have Ringling prospering.
Max Patkin was a pretty swell clown fellow, too. Not sure if he was a Ringling or a Barnum man.
Did you know that when a Ringling man is sick, the authorities assume he is drunk, and when a Barnum man is drunk, the authorities assume he is sick?
How So DAK can save money.
Build a branch of Hills Dale here !
We could disperse with the entire Dept o Ed. , Governor ( and affiliated support staff), and other government departments.
Of course that nasty 🤮 government 💵
Money would have to go back to DC!
O, it does look like the “advanced” permit would allow an education student to leap straight into paid teaching, without a traditional student-teaching internship. That paid gig would appear to count as the student-teaching experience and credit necessary to graduate.
Alternative ways for teachers to get certified is probably alright, but dumping someone into a classroom without some prior experience in the classroom with students around the age they are going to be responsible to teach is asking for bad outcomes. I remember being in discussions in Rapid City about instituting a mentoring system after a new teacher is hired, but this was always after a period of either student teaching or some prior teaching or training experience. It makes sense to pay student teachers for the work they do in the classroom. That stipend should be funded totally by the state. Am I correct that a classroom teacher who takes on a student teacher gets some sort of stipend in addition to their salary?