We measure success of the STEMELL Program in many ways, including careful and consistent on-site observations by faculty and school administrators.  Additionally, students self-review and review their peers' pedagogical practices as lessons unfold in real time, and through videotaped vignettes. These practices are also evaluated through components of the Danielson Framework. Scholars participate in focus group meetings regularly, and responded to survey questions that are geared toward assessing lesson preparations and their enactments, interactions with students, and those had with mentor teachers.  Evidence of success has emerged from journal entries and Scholars' narrative responses to a variety of questions. 

Scholars have had success not only in securing positions in schools that have a large number of ELL students, but also in schools where they have trained. These schools have had excellent success at retaining Scholars because of their growing levels of expertise. We also observe and mentor Scholars during their first year of teaching using the Lehman College Observation Protocol, modified to include a measure of teaching effectiveness using the Sheltered Instructional Observation Protocol (SIOP). From this tool, we have noted that mentor and observers have described Scholars' teaching as similar to those of third and fourth year teachers.

The New York City mayor, Bill deBlasio, and New York City Department of Education Chancellor, Richard Carranza, visited our host school for Noyce Scholars, and commended the school for their outstanding graduation rate and the success of the school's advanced placement courses (see link below).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13FODLYu8OI

Our success of the STEMELL program's creation, structure and its enactment has had ripple effects that have spanned into other aspects of the Department of Middle and High School at Lehman College in the Bronx, New York. Surveys of Noyce Scholars and comparison groups show that scholars provided higher ratings in their levels of confidence in addressing the needs of ELLs and gave higher ratings about the effectiveness of the teacher preparation program than their counterparts. The department consequently adopted the Noyce model that resulted in making changes for all of its undergraduate candidates so that they too can have similar clinically rich experiences.

Hope this is helpful, Kristen.

     All the best,

     Gillian

Scholars were placed in the all EL school in Year I, and in mainstream classrooms in a regular school in Year II. We worked closely with the School administrators in both schools to identify and select the teachers who applied to be mentors. The application, which outlined the requirements and guidelines for the program, was followed by a personal interview. The Assistant Principals accepted to be in charge of organizing the placements and agreed to teach a weekly seminar course on site, after school on Fridays, to enable Noyce Scholars to debrief, discuss what they observed, analyze videos, and reflect on their experiences.

The mentor teachers spent time with Noyce Scholars during the day they visited, co-designing and implementing lesson plans, and debriefing regular with them. The Saturday morning program in semester II was entirely taught by the Noyce Scholars under the supervision of the mentors, who again, would give them feedback at the end of the session.

These two schools were both part of the Lehman College Professional Development Network. Teachers were used to working with our student teachers and fieldwork students.

The structure of the program, a 5-year BA/MA, enables Noyce scholars to start teaching during the fifth year, the Master’s year while finishing that degree. Some scholars finish Student Teaching while earning their Bachelor degree (Case I), while others graduate without having done Student Teaching (Case II) but are able to earn a NYS Transitional B Certificate, valid for three years, which enables them to teach while finishing what remains of the master’s degree.

Case I Scholars receive full year mentoring during their first year of teaching. A mentor visits them five times during the academic year. Mentoring in the second year is less formal and consists of 3 visits.

Case II Scholars, on the other hand, enroll in the Internship course (equivalent to student teaching for someone who is teaching full-time) and get full supervision and mentoring benefits through that course. We provide a mentor who visits them 3 times during their second semester of teaching after completion of the internship course, and another 3 times during their second year of teaching. Ongoing support beyond the second year exists but is not formal. We contact them regularly to ask about their progress in the field. It is also common to see a scholar take more time to finish their master’s degree, giving us the opportunity to continue to monitor their situation

Thank you for sharing.  I appreciate the mentoring support, as I often feel that we do not do a good enough job of this as students earn their certification and enter teaching!

Thank you for your questions

Our Scholars use several strategies that are aligned with students' cultures, including soliciting reflections from students regarding how best they learn, what strategies they enjoy, and what have they found within their own cultures and educational experiences that serve them well in their leaning.  Some of our science textbooks and videos have multilingual components that within them one can find, for example, cultural analogies,definitions, and visual equivalents.  Additionally, many of our Scholars themselves come from diverse backgrounds that provide for cultural alignment and resonance.  Some of what the students share and is found to be helpful for the collective gets incorporated into lessons. This sharing as affords insights into aspects of cultural similarities as well as differences that make for rich conversations, and hence deeper understandings.  Essentially, not only do Scholars scaffold lessons, integrate differentiated strategies using vocabulary that is aligned with students backgrounds, group students according to their English proficiencies, they are also quite creative in experimenting with novel ideas that they think will help students.  We are involved now in furthering our understanding of many of these strategies by continuing to evaluate our data through video analysis, journal entries, focus group meetings and more.