Student Teaching Placement
Candidates admitted to student teaching cannot be guaranteed a particular school district, building, or master teacher. The decision for placement is the responsibility of the Director of Student Teaching, department faculty, and school district personnel.
Student Teacher Placement Options
Option 1: Local area (no additional costs/fees)
A strength of the Carroll College Teacher Education Program is field experiences in local schools supervised by program faculty members throughout students’ four years of study. Because of our smaller size (typically about 20 student teachers each semester) and our close relationships with local schools, the Teacher Education Program at Carroll College is nearly always able to find excellent student teaching placements in the neighboring Helena, East Helena, and Montana City schools. This benefits local-area student teachers in three ways: 1) they return to campus each Monday afternoon during the student teaching semester to discuss with their student teaching colleagues and the Director of Student Teaching the challenges and successes of the previous week; 2) they interact weekly with guest professionals in Education Seminar, learning what needs to be done to win their first teaching jobs and discussing other topics vitally important to new teachers about to enter the profession; and 3) their student teaching is supervised weekly by Carroll College Teacher Education Program faculty members who are experts in the supervision norms and assessment methods of the program. Because of the benefits of a local-area student teaching placement, it is the strongly preferred model for Carroll College Teacher Education students.
Option 2: Out-of-area (may require additional costs/fees)
Student teaching placements outside the Helena area are not recommended for Carroll College Teacher Education students because: 1) they make impossible the valuable face-to-face interactions that occur in local-area student teaching placements with student teaching colleagues, the Director of Student Teaching, and other Carroll College Teacher Education faculty members; 2) they make difficult during student teaching the weekly consideration of matters vital to beginning teachers that occur on Monday evenings on the Carroll campus in Education Seminar; and 3) they make it very unlikely that the student teachers will have their placements supervised by Carroll College Teacher Education Program faculty members who are experts in the supervision norms and assessment methods of the program.
Student teaching placements outside of the Helena area will be considered on an individual basis. Student teacher candidates requesting student teaching assignments outside Option 1 placement areas must have a strong and legitimate reason for doing so.
Out-of-area placements in other communities or settings will be made when:
- Helena school districts (see Option 1) cannot provide an appropriate placement in the student’s area of licensing.
- A placement in the Helena area will impose an extreme hardship and prevent the student from completing the student teaching experience.
- Students have a GPA of 3.25 or better.
- For any out-of-area request to be approved, the faculty members of the Department of Education must judge that there is very low probability that the student will require intervention of department faculty members during his/her student teaching experience.
All out-of-area student teaching placements must be approved by the faculty members of the Department of Education prior to student teaching assignments. A student seeking an out-of-area student teaching placement must submit a written request to the Director of Teacher Education documenting the extreme hardship that will be imposed by placement in the Helena area. Appropriate documentation supporting the request should be attached. The written request for out-of-area student teaching should be submitted not later than March 15 of the spring semester prior to the year of student teaching. Requests received after March 15 will not be accepted. Faculty members of the Department of Education will review the request and other documentation to determine if the request meets the criteria mentioned above and will either approve or disapprove the request.
If an out-of-area teaching placement request is approved, the Director of Student Teaching will determine the best possible supervision model, either with Carroll College supervisors, with contracted supervision by another college/university, or with another qualified individual. If the student’s request is approved, all cost for supervision that would exceed those incurred during a Helena placement, must be borne by the student teaching candidate. This may include salary of the college supervisor and all expenses associated with travel, lodging, and meals.
If the out-of-teaching placement request is disapproved, the Director of Student Teaching will place the student teacher candidate in a Helena area school in accordance with Option 1 listed above.