LSU School of Education students will have a smoother transition from sitting in classroom desks to teaching from lecterns after four LSU SOE faculty members received Believe and Prepare Educator Preparation Innovation Grants last week. The Louisiana Department of Education funded the grants.
Grant recipients Estanislado Barrera, the Elementary Holmes graduate program adviser, and Cynthia DiCarlo, Early Childhood Teacher Preparation Program coordinator, collectively received $200,000 to partner with the East Baton Rouge Parish School System. The partnership will allow year-long residencies for student teaching.
Barrera said the grant sought to target priority schools and develop a strong relationship between LSU and EBR Parish public schools. Through the program, he said, the EBR system could attract new and talented teachers to place in the priority schools.
“We really felt that if we could somehow collaborate and partner with EBR Parish to develop this cadre of really strong mentor teachers…that we would be able to better prepare the LSU students, which then meant that we would be producing highly qualified teachers,” Barrera said.
Instead of student-teaching for one semester, Elementary Holmes graduate program participants take additional coursework to graduate with a degree in elementary education. However, Barrera said they do not graduate with a certificate in teaching.
Program participants spend the summer after graduation as graduate students then begin a year-long student teaching experience in the fall. Participants graduate with a master’s degree in teaching.
Since he took control of the program this year, Barrera said he revamped it so that students will be certified to teach English as a second language and as a Reading Specialist in the state.
“In three semesters, they get a master’s and really good certificates in the field of education,” Barrera said.
SOE professor Jacqueline Bach, English professor Sue Weinstein and English Ph.D student Anna West will fund Geaux Teach English with their $150,000 Believe and Prepare grant.
Weinstein said the grant will go toward revisions in the Geaux Teach English program and a summer institute for local English teachers so that “everyone is on the same page.”
She said student feedback revealed Geaux Teach English participants did not have the most meaningful experiences, leading Weinstein to create two one-year student teaching residencies.
Junior year marks the first year of residency. For those two semesters, Weinstein said students will be placed in two different classroom settings — one middle school and one high school — in groups of three so they can plan together and observe each other.
In a student’s senior year, he or she will student teach in one classroom from August through May.
“It’s going to give them a more accurate experience of what it’s like to actually be a teacher in a classroom for a year,” Weinstein said.
SOE’s Margaret-Mary Sulentic Dowell, Erin Casey, Paula Summers Calderon and Sassy Wheeler received a $50,000 grant in partnership with top administration in Baker, Louisiana schools.
Sulentic Dowell said the Elementary Education Undergraduate program aims for arts integration — an approach to teaching in which students construct and demonstrate understanding through an art form — into the elementary curriculum.
She said the grant money will provide “seed money” to work with mentor teachers and incorporate professional development training.
She also said a year-long residency would allow LSU student teachers to watch their Baker students grow academically and forge a closer bond with them.
“When you only have a semester, you’re either going to see how a school year begins or you’re going to see how a school year ends,” Sulentic Dowell said. “But you’re not going to see a school year in its entirety.”

Gallery • 8 Photos

Haskell Whittington

East Baton Rouge Executive Director of School Leadership Ben Necaise speaks to the students about what they have learned about english over the past semester at McKinley Highschool on Monday Nov. 16, 2015, in Baton Rouge.