Hi Anne,

The 50% retention after 2 years is the national statistic often cited.  I never collected data on retention but through the years I had had a number of graduates who were excellent STEM students and had left teaching within 2 years. They loved their discipline but they said that their classrooms were often out of control.   When I was asked to direct the Teacher Academy, I made a condition that our students would need to have significant time and increasing responsibility in middle schools and high schools--thus the host school internship was created!  Students in our program are undergraduate honors STEM majors who "think" that they would like to teach at the high school or middle school level.  Surprising to me, almost all who "think" they want to teach do actually become STEM teachers.  By the time TEHA students are juniors, many have had a lot of classroom experiences so they "know" that they want to teach.  This is important since the Noyce program begins in the junior year and requires a commitment to teach for 2 years for each year of Noyce Scholarship and our Financial Aid Office makes very certain that they fulfill their commitment.  The Noyce Scholarship pays for all college expenses (thanks to CUNY tuition) and frees the student from doing a lot of outside jobs (we restrict to 10 hours per week).  So...the main incentive is money but there are special opportunities --summer teaching internships, international teaching internships, and professional conferences that are available only to Noyce scholars.  Noyce scholars who have participated in these special opportunities have made presentations at our Fieldwork seminars and their enthusiasm was infectious!

Hi Ann,

It was absolutely critical to partner with an Education faculty member who has worked with local schools.  In our case, Deirdre Armitage has traditionally placed STEM students in student teaching their last semester before graduation.  Before my involvement with this program, I had never been in a local school although I had taught at CSI for decades!  I asked her to use her connections and knowledge about the different school cultures and place students in host school internships beginning their first semester in the TEHA program.  The TEHA accepts students in their freshman, sophomore, junior years so some students have 7 semesters of host school internships before they student teach.  We work with 7 high schools and 2 middle schools--all high needs but very different cultures, size, demographics, languages, locations.  Our TEHA students are first-generation college and identify with the students at these local schools.

The host schools have been very receptive to the program--although at times when I have observed a class at a local school I have wondered why that teacher was selected as a mentor. (when I asked the TEHA students about that class, they said that they learned a lot --all the things not to do!). Also some teachers do not like to share--especially if they are themselves being judged for tenure!  As the years have passed, we have more of our graduates as teachers in these schools and they are excellent mentors.  We place about 20 to 25 students each semester in classrooms.  We have not asked to hand-select mentor teachers--different schools plan different internships.  There has definitely been an increase in our graduates as collaborating teachers--an ideal since they trust our undergraduates and give them a chance to gradually have more teaching experiences--"do nows", group tutoring, lesson planning, and a class lesson.  Observation is useful as an initial host school experience but we have urged our students to volunteer and become actively involved in teaching.

Yes - as your students graduate it is a best-case scenario to place your current Scholars with graduated Scholars! We do the same here. We also struggle sometimes though, as we have to follow the school districts' selection of mentor teachers due to responsibilities our "choice" mentors may have. Most of the time it works out great - but sometimes there are struggles. Either way it is an excellent learning experience.

It's good to see that you're having success with the community aspect of your Noyce program.  We, too, are starting to see those benefits as we place scholars with alums, and are starting to build on that by incorporating more community-facilitating components on campus. We were able to gain a new office space on campus that is big enough to serve as a lounge-type informal gathering/study spot.  Unfortunately that came to us in Summer 2020, and we haven't yet been able to take advantage of it due to pandemic restrictions.  We did have online events instead, and found that some of our more-distant alums joined us for those when they never could have thought about driving to campus for it.  We'll be keeping virtual gatherings even after we get to use our (still) new space again!

I agree that we too will keep some virtual meetings--parking is a serious problem on our campus so no one complained about a zoom meeting for the Fieldwork Seminar!  We have a resource room where our students hang out in normal times and they have told me how much they miss it.  It is equipped with a smart board but it seems that the blackboard gets more use. Our college draws the bulk of its students from many of the high schools where our students intern so community involvement is crucial.  Our students are honors students and the best advertisement possible for our college.

Hi John,

Most of our students are first-generation college and many of the parents think teaching is not a good choice for their honors STEM children.  They would much prefer them to be doctors or engineers.  I think that is reflected in our numbers--few biology, chemistry or physics majors and many more math majors.  Our numbers show that if you can get the student into an honors program that respects teaching--like the Teacher Education Honors Academy--early in their college career then many find that they love teaching and they are good at it. They also have fellow graduates --some at the same school but many at different schools--that provide useful help and encouragement.  I certainly wish that teaching got the honor and pay that it deserves! 

Each school partner designs the host school internship for their school and there are differences.  For example, some schools assign an intern to one collaborating teacher for the semester while others arrange for the same course with different teachers.  All collaborating teachers are asked to complete an evaluation at the end of every semester.