The UConn Neag School of Education has expanded their enrollment and program outreach in an effort to minimize the teacher shortage in Connecticut.
Neag provides accepted undergraduate students with a 5-year plan to earn their master’s degree and a teaching license in the state of Connecticut post-graduation, Neag School of Education Dean Jason Irizarry said. Students apply to the Integrated Bachelor and Master’s program in their sophomore year at UConn. Starting in their junior year, students are placed in a different district each semester where they student teach, sixth semester special education major Hannah Gariepy said.
Dr. Violet Jiménez Sims, the associate director of teacher education at Neag, said that education students could meet some of the demand for teachers. Her five-year program partners with 13 districts in the state, and she said that many of these districts hire their graduates. Dr. Niralee Patel-Lye, who directs Neag’s accelerated teacher certification program, said the department recently piloted a program that places students in full-time teaching positions.
“Rather than supporting students with my practical expertise, I have to narrow my own curriculum to address students’ anxiety regarding edTPA and answer logistical questions regarding the requirements and expectations, much of which they are not finding helpful to their practice,” Violet Jiménez Sims, an assistant clinical professor at the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education, wrote in an op-ed.
Rachel Holden is a graduate student studying agricultural education at UConn’s Neag School through the Teacher Certification Program for College Graduates.
Neag School faculty have been busy interviewing prospective undergraduate students for Fall 2011 and recently selected most of the incoming class for the various programs. Prospective students went through an extensive selection process that included applications and portfolios, along with written and oral interviews. For 2011, the Integrated Bachelor’s/Master’s Teacher Education Program (IB/M) admitted 117 new […]
