- Year 2019
- NSF Noyce Award # 1660770
- First Name Doris
- Last Name Kimbrough
- Institution University of Colorado Denver
- Role/Position Professor of Chemistry and PI of CU Denver's Noyce project
- Workshop Category Track 1: Scholarships and Stipends
- Workshop Disciplines Audience Biological
- Target Audience Higher Education Institution Administrators, Noyce Teaching Fellows, Project PIs / Co-PIs / Other Faculty/Staff, School and District Administrators, Undergraduate and/or Graduate Noyce Scholars
- Topics Preparing Teachers for High-Need School Districts
- Session Length 45 minutes
Goals
Participants will be introduced to the partner school model used by University of Colorado Denver’s School of Education and Human Development for the preparation of their teacher candidates (student teachers. Through a facilitated discussion, they will understand the roles and relationships among the partner school personnel, CU Denver faculty and teacher candidates while the latter are completing their internships in the partner schools. Participants will understand the unique role and value of the STEM-specific Noyce Mentor in providing both professional coaching and emotional support for teacher candidates as they progress through the CU Denver teacher preparation program and in their first year(s) of teaching (induction period), as backed by evidence. Participants will be able to analyze case studies of teacher candidates as they progressed through the teacher preparation program to discover potential areas of candidate stress, teaching challenges, and coaching opportunities. They will then examine the benefits of having a Noyce Mentor to provide extra support and coaching—with a STEM focus—for teacher candidates.
Evidence
Evidence includes feedback from project participants (Noyce Scholars), the Noyce mentor(s), and other project staff in the form of anonymous survey responses and interviews performed by our evaluation teams.
Proposal
The Noyce mentor role was conceived as part of CU Denver’s first Noyce science project (Promoting Undergraduate Licensure in Science Education, PULSE, NSF #1136122), implemented in the Noyce Mathematics Noyce project (Noyce Math Scholars, NSF #0934945), and is currently in place in our third Noyce project (CU Denver Noyce Track 1, NT-1, NSF #1660770), which supports pre-service teachers in both mathematics and science. We have worked with three Noyce mentors through the course of the projects listed above. In each case she was/is an experienced STEM teacher in the K-12 arena, possesses considerable leadership experience, and is retired from teaching. Her role has been one of both professional coaching and emotional support to our Noyce participants at three levels of their path to becoming effective teachers: 1) before they enter the licensure program, 2) during the post-baccalaureate licensure experience, and 3) during the first and sometimes second year of teaching in a high needs school district (induction period). A STEM-specific mentor who operates outside of our SEHD/partner school administrative system provides a unique and extremely effective model towards supporting pre-service and beginning teachers. Workshop participants will be divided into groups, and each group will analyze and present a case-study of a teacher at a different point in her/his path to becoming STEM teachers in high needs districts. We will then discuss how the Noyce mentor helped to support and coach each teacher in his or her journey to becoming an effective STEM teacher.
