Multiple Subject Program News

Students by the Numbers

• The Multiple Subject Teacher Education Program (MSTEP) has 61 candidates working toward a credential and will likely admit 24 students to the spring cohort. This year, candidates have worked with 95 cooperating teachers in 46 schools across 10 districts in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties. We are grateful for the support of our partner schools and those who help us secure placements for our teacher candidates.

Program Snapshot

• The program continues to feature an early start for those who begin the second phase of the program in the fall. This gives candidates the opportunity to see how teachers set up their classroom environment at the beginning of the year. Some candidates also get a head start preparing for the edTPA assessment, which focuses on planning, instruction and assessment in mathematics.
• Briana Ronan, whose field is second language acquisition, and Julie Herron, who specializes in elementary math education, are co-teaching the math methods class. This collaboration provides teacher candidates with additional opportunities to learn to teach emergent bilingual students. Following new state requirements for the California’s English Language Development (ELD) standards, candidates will work with the development and teaching of designated and integrated ELD lessons.
• Looking ahead, the faculty will be making changes based on updated Teaching Performance Expectations (TPEs) from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. The commission is aligning TPEs for candidates and practicing teachers.

 

Faculty Notes

• Julee Bauer (literacy and bilingual education) and Briana Ronan (bilingual education) are working on comprehensive literacy with educators in San Luis Coastal Unified School District and Guadalupe Union Elementary. The group is also examining the effects of a professional learning community on classroom instruction.
• Tanya Flushman (literacy education) and Magnusson are leading a cross-curricular project with local teachers. The project combines literacy and science learning to increase students’ development in both areas. The group started with fourth grade and fifth grade will be added this spring. The work has been funded through the Teacher Quality Program grant. Flushman and Ronan presented on “reflective tools and practices in pre-service teacher education” at the annual conference of the Literacy Research Association. Flushman has also been working with colleagues in Mexico and was invited to speak in Bogatá, Columbia.
• Julie Herron (math education) has recently been hired by the San Luis Obispo County Office of Education to help kindergarten through third grade teachers with teaching to the common core standards in mathematics.
• Shirley Magnusson (science education) is collaborating with science education and literacy education faculty at the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and the University of Pittsburgh in the development and testing of PBL units in grades 3-5. These units are designed to meet all NGSS standards at a grade level and incorporate common core ELA and math standards. The project is funded by the George Lucas Foundation.​ Magnusson and Ronan have partnered with colleagues in the School of Education as well as scientists and engineers at Cal Poly to help prospective and practicing teachers learn about project-based learning. This project is funded by the Bechtel Foundation.
• Briana Ronan recently published a chapter in a book about the state of the art in theory, methodology and pedagogy regarding multimodality in writing.