5 Ways to Effectively Support Preservice Teachers

Practicum is a critical component of teacher training. This field experience provides opportunities for preservice teachers to experiment, reflect, and refine their skills. However, if the support from their supervisors and cooperating teachers is poor quality, limited, or nonexistent, they may not advance professionally. Hence, teacher-training institutions worldwide have made significant investments in enhancing practicum supervision. Some have provided structured mentorship programs and targeted training (for students, supervisors, and cooperating teachers).

Nonetheless, there are persistent challenges for all involved. Against this background, I am proposing five research-grounded ways in which supervisors and cooperating teachers can better support their trainees. 

1. Clear, Actionable Feedback

We can offer clear and actionable feedback—specifying the areas that require improvement and providing concrete examples of our expectations. As a language education specialist, I provide my student teachers with several examples of SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely) objectives that reflect the cognitive, psychomotor, and affective learning domains for a language arts lesson.

Here are some examples of the objectives I have shared with my trainees:

• Use an assigned picture stimulus to write a 300-word short story that scores at least 70 percent on a holistic rubric (cognitive).
• Advocate against racial discrimination (as highlighted in the poem that has been given) by composing a 300-word letter to the editor that scores at least 70 percent on a holistic rubric (affective and cognitive).
• Share at least one moral lesson learned after reflecting on past acts of disobedience presented in the short story that has been given (affective).
• Use props to perform a five-minute dramatization of Act 1, Scene 1 of the play that has been given (psychomotor).

I also guide my students with selecting appropriate activities for each stage of a 5E lesson plan (engage, explore, explain, extend, evaluate). Here are some examples.

Engagement: A song, picture, meme, movie clip, or air-worthy social media video may be used to introduce the focus of your lesson, activate prior knowledge, or build relevant background knowledge. When teaching students how to write a letter of apology, you may use the first few seconds of Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” as a springboard for a conversation about admitting personal errors and making amends. Students can consider specific questions before listening to the song: “What does Justin Bieber repeatedly say in the chorus of this song? What does he aim to achieve?”

Afterward, ask students to share their answers and extend the discussion: “Have you ever had to apologize to someone? Tell us about your experience. What value is there in apologizing? What might we do to give an official apology?”

Exploration: Assign one or two questions that students can use to guide their research online (via Google or a curated Wakelet collection). You could also provide discrete sentences and prompt students to make important discoveries about the grammatical or rhetorical concept under study. If your focus is on capitalization, for instance, question students as follows: “Which words in this sentence start with a capital letter? What does ‘David’ represent? (A person’s name.) What is Charlotte’s Web referring to? (The name of a book.) Based on the words capitalized here, what are some ways in which capital letters are used?”

Elaboration: Collaborative activities such a shared, interactive, or pair writing are effective. Students may also engage in movement-intensive games to clarify, practice, and reinforce the concepts and skills they have been taught. Musical chairs and Simon Says are classic, full-body examples. Competitive online games like Blooket, Kahoot, and Quizizz are also ideal for fast-paced revision.

Evaluation: Independent writing tasks, worksheets, oral presentations, and graphic developments (posters, infographics, videos), among other things, may be used to gauge students’ knowledge and understanding based on the lesson objectives.

2. Lesson Demonstrations

In addition to specifying what student teachers can do to improve their practice, I provide instructional models consistent with Linda Darling-Hammond, Maria E. Hyler, and Madelyn Gardner’s recommendations for professional development.

For example, one year, I was supervising a preservice teacher who struggled with creating and using probing questions. To better support her, I co-taught a segment of her lesson and encouraged her to observe my approach. We had a debriefing at the end of the session, and she attempted to apply the techniques she had learned during subsequent classes. On other occasions, I showed students model lessons from YouTube or professional enhancement courses in which I was enrolled. We watched, paused, discussed, and documented the teachers’ strategies for future adaptation.

3. Need-Based Workshops

Although my student teachers complete several theory and methodology courses ahead of their practicum, I still collaborate with colleagues to host targeted workshops. In preparation for the professional learning sessions, I solicit my students’ input on the topics and questions we should address. Students share their ideas via Google Forms, emails, or informal conversations. My colleagues and I then collaborate to respond through a series of one-hour sessions.

During one of our training sessions, for example, a colleague meticulously demonstrated a phonics lesson, from engagement to evaluation. The students and I later critiqued and revised a poorly written lesson plan that served as a model of effective writing instruction.

4. Ready-Made Support

We have limited time for direct student consultations, as, inevitably, there are competing demands. In light of this, over the years, I have curated and shared online resources that my students can independently access and use throughout their practicums. These include sample lesson plans from previous students and published authors, as well as sheets of frequently asked questions and answers that address recurring instructional concerns. I include strategy charts and links to online teaching resources such as fillable graphic organizers, anchor charts, reading passages, and more.

5. Moral Support

Practicum can be emotionally exhausting; therefore, student teachers need strong and consistent emotional support. In keeping with this, I email, call, or visit my students weekly for brief check-ins. I vividly remember calling one of my trainees on a rainy Friday evening. At the end of our conversation—during which she vented and cried—she thanked me profusely for listening to and advising her. She said she needed the support. Recently, this same student graduated with upper second-class honors, securing a teaching position at a well-known high school.

Let us endeavor to provide consistent and concrete assistance, so our preservice teachers may become competent, confident, and independent in their respective fields.