Video Transcript
[Dr. Sherry Dismuke, clinical associate professor]: We had a burning question in the College of Education and that was “How do we know Boise State teachers leave our programs as effective teachers?” So we started a study of our graduates in the field. We follow our brand-new teachers out into their classrooms to provide support and to help them design effective and powerful units for use in their classroom with their P-12 students. We meet with them once a month and we talk about effective teaching, what it looks like, and we help layer on new skills and strategies for them to dig even deeper into their practice. One of the things we do is we help them look through their own student data. So we work side by side with them to find out what practices are they using that are successful and what practices could use more integration or more shoring up. This side-by-side inquiry into their teaching practices helps us to find out that yes our teachers are well-started beginners. They’re doing great things in the field. We enjoy going out into their classrooms and observing them teaching. We talk to their students to find out what they think about their teachers, and we talk with their principals to see how they’re doing. This in turn helps us to improve our teacher education programs back at Boise State.