Teaming Student Teachers in the Middle School to Create Successful Partnerships

Abstract

There were 8,457 public middle schools in the United States in 1994, figure that climbed from 6,834 middle schools in 1989 (Market Data Retrival, 1994). This increase may be attributed in part to the flurry of attention raised by the indict ments from the national report Turning Points: Preparing American Youth for the 21st Century (Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, 1989). Turning Points not recommended reform at the middle level, but also called attention to the need to improve middle level teacher preparation. However, in reviewing data collected from the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education member institutions, McEwin and Dickinson (1995) noted subtle increas es in the percentage of undergraduate programs offering middle level preparation. Scales (1994) reported that in 1991 38% of higher education institutions offered any type of special preparation program for middle level educators. And, while many states are beginning to offer middle level certification, only 11 of 33 states that now have special middle grades licenses or endorsements actually require middle level teachers to hold them in order to teach young adolescents (McEwin, Dickinson, Erb, & Scales, 1995, p. 4). As McEwin (1992) concluded, a perennial roadblock to excellence in middle level edu cation is the practice of staffing middle level schools with teachers and other professional personnel who have no special preparation for...working...with young adoles cents (p. 369). Teacher education programs need to keep pace with their companions: the public schools. By creating middle level partnerships to provide undergrad uates with authentic field experiences and avenues to create and teach interdisciplinary units by using develop mentally appropriate instructional strategies, colleges of education may enhance elementary and secondary certi fication until specialty courses and programs in middle level become more numerous.