Phases of Clinical Practice
Phase 1: Orientation (Weeks 1-2)
Phase 2: Increasing Responsibility (Weeks 3-8)
Phase 3: Full Responsibility (Weeks 9-15)
Phase 4: Phase Out (Week 16)
Clinical Practice provides an opportunity for the teacher candidate to be a member of a true teaching team, and because of this, the teacher candidate's role, responsibilities, and tasks will vary some depending on where he/she is placed. Clinical Practice assignments can never be exactly alike for all people. The Semester Timeline should represent a realistic expectation for each unique situation. The teacher candidate's involvement in classroom activities and the timeline for assuming increasing responsibilities will depend upon the individual's readiness to perform the tasks assigned.
Initial activities in the Clinical Practice experience should be relatively simple, guaranteeing success. As the activities become more complex, past successes become building blocks of confidence within the teacher candidate. A semester timeline should be developed, reviewed, and adjusted based on the readiness and performance of the individual teacher candidate.
While each full-semester experience must include a minimum of 20 consecutive school days during which the teacher candidate becomes the lead teacher – it is absolutely acceptable (in fact desirable!) for co-teaching to continue throughout the experience. What a great way to develop skills for differentiated learning if there are two teachers working together in the classroom!
If the teacher candidate has two placements (i.e. elementary and secondary), the timeline should include at least 15 consecutive school days of lead teaching for each placement. Because of the shorter timeframe in each school, an accelerated phase-in/phase-out schedule is required.
A typical sequence for a teacher candidate to assume duties might include the following:
- observing the class, record keeping, getting acquainted with school and protocols, and learning student names;
- leading daily routine activities and/or small group activities;
- sharing planning and teaching responsibilities (team teaching) with the cooperating teacher; tutoring individual students – during or after school;
- assuming gradual responsibility for instruction and supervision, one subject at a time;
- assuming full responsibility of instruction and supervision for all subjects; and
- “Phasing out” of responsibilities for instruction and supervision.
Please note: The basic outline provided in the Clinical Practice Handbook is only a suggestion – meant to be used as a guideline. The actual semester timeline (assignment) should be created together by the teacher candidate and cooperating teacher. It should be set up to allow the teacher candidate to gradually assume more and greater responsibility as the semester progresses, as well as allowing time for him/her to have a “phase out” week at the end of the semester. The timeline should also show dates for planned activities such as parent/teacher conferences, field trips, in-services and other professional development opportunities, school breaks, etc.