Field Experiences in the Ether: The Pandemic-induced Realities of Learning to Teach

Abstract

In the United States during March and April of 2020, more than 50 million K-12 students were impacted by school closures with many forced to engage in online learning for continuity in their 2019-2020 school year. This disruption to K-12 public and private schools reverberated in programs of teacher education around the country. As school-university partners, we wanted to provide opportunities for new teacher candidates to be able to engage in some form of interaction with students and veteran teachers. We drew on the structures and strength of our school-university partnership to build our plan to engage in pandemic-induced, alternative field experiences. In this article we describe how one middle level school-university partnership leaned into virtual learning spaces and provided opportunities to help teacher candidates who were beginning their teacher education program conceptualize teaching and learning in new ways. Additionally, we provide classroom teachers’ perspectives of hosting teacher candidates in a virtual learning format offering insights on best practices and challenges to consider.

Keywords

• middle level teacher education
• alternative field experiences