Winthrop University’s College of Education is creating a center of excellence called Addressing Shortages through Partnership Internship Residences in Education, putting to use a one-year grant from the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education for $99,802.
ASPIRE is coming at a time when the South Carolina public school system is suffering not only from the pandemic, but also from years of teachers choosing not to pursue their careers within the state due to most other states being accommodated with higher pay and greater resources.
“South Carolina has provided some new guidance on a program that’s existed for a long time. It’s called an internship certificate, and it allows a student to take on the role of the teacher in their final semester. Our partner districts started contacting us and asking if we can do this at Winthrop,” said Dr. Beth Costner, associate dean of the Richard W. Riley College of Education.
“There’s a huge teacher shortage,” Costner said. “Teaching is not an easy profession, but it’s certainly a rewarding one, and there is a shortage at all levels and in many subject areas, so this was a way that they could address that.”
Typically, students seeking to become a teacher through various programs within Winthrop’s College of Education do not receive payment during their internships. And this can be problematic for many students who do not have the financial flexibility to work full-time in a school without pay.
But with ASPIRE, students will be able to receive valuable teaching experience while getting paid.
“With our current NetSERVE grant, we are developing teacher residencies built on an 18-month MAT program where students are paid $20,000 to serve alongside a mentor teacher in a year-long residency,” said Dr. Jennie F. Rakestraw, dean of the College of Education, at the board of trustees meeting held on Friday, Feb. 19.
“We recently received a Center of Excellence grant from the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education, and this will give us an opportunity to develop an option for an undergraduate model that is built on the teacher residency idea,” Rakestraw said. “This will allow education majors to step into a classroom, as a teacher, during their last semester and be paid.”
According to the Winthrop website, “Costner and Bettie Parsons Barger, director of the Rex Institute for Educational Renewal and Partnerships, will serve as co-directors of the ASPIRE Center.”
Initially, the College of Education is implementing this program in a pilot fashion in order to retain a better understanding of what will be expected of the intern, Barger explains.
“So this semester, the grant allows us to do a pilot study, and we are able to work with eight different schools and three districts,” Barger said. “And there were some pretty significant guidelines and parameters for the districts and schools with which we could work.”
“So, we will pilot from approximately beginning of April through the end of the K-12 school year with an internship certificate model. And what that means is that one of our interns will step in as the primary teacher for the rest of the semester.”
“The way the typical internship works is there’s an intern and a mentor, and they work
very closely together, and they co-teach, and they’re in the room together a lot,” Barger said. “But for the pilot, the mentor teacher will be removed and working on other projects for their schools and districts at that time, and still help serve as a support role.”
“Our intern will be the primary teacher, and that is to see what we need to do in terms of preparing our interns so that we can support them and make sure that the K12 student is learning and what kind of model works really well for the mentor role, which we are calling a master teacher in the internship certificate program.”
“So we’re looking at all of the pieces from intern screening to identify who is going to be most successful through implementation, and we’ll have some reflection and gather a lot of data so that when we begin full implementation in Fall 2021, we’ll have a good system in place,” Barger said.
As one of the most respected teaching colleges in the south, the Richard W. Riley College of Education is on the front lines of the teacher shortage in South Carolina.
School districts in the state rely on Winthrop to produce effective and experienced teachers, and ASPIRE is an excellent means of producing such teachers.
I would like more information on this because I am a freshman early childhood education major and I would love for my internship to also be a paying job if I got the chance! Also when it says you will reside at a certain school does that just mean that is where you will be for the whole semester during school hours or is it like a campus that you will be living on during that time, I’m a commuter to Winthrop so that’s why I’m asking?
Hey, Alyssa! So as far as I understand, it is called a residency, however, this program does not provide any living conditions. Of course, there is the potential for students who live on campus to participate in this program, but this program would not cause a student to have to change living conditions/locations. This program, as of right now, only exists in local school districts that are within commuting distance from Winthrop campus.