Field Experience

Elementary Education major, Danielle Johnston, shares a field work experience.

"During the Spring of 2009, I took EDRL 451 with Roxanne Stansbury. This particular session was being taught at a local elementary school. Every week we spent an hour a day in an assigned classroom where we were expected to participate and contribute as allowed by the classroom teacher. During this class, I learned a creative writing technique called a RAFT. A RAFT is a creative writing strategy that gives the writer a choice by allowing them to take on unique roles and unusual perspectives.

For my final project, I decided to teach the RAFT technique to my assigned class. After modeling how to write a book advertisement from the point of view of an advertiser, the classroom teacher pulled me aside and told me how impressed she was with my lesson. She had never heard of a RAFT and asked me if it would be okay for her to keep my example and all of the students’ work. She informed me that she was definitely planning on using RAFTs in the future.

As a future teacher, receiving a compliment from an experienced teacher in the field was a huge confidence booster and clearly says something about the education I’m receiving from Nevada State College.”

An important part of a teacher's education is field experience and student teaching. As an education student, you will spend over 100 hours actively involved in classroom practice throughout the Nevada public school system before you student teach. NSC maintains ties with over 150 schools in the Clark County School District to provide these learning opportunities for its education students.

Field experiences involve much more than observing. Preservice teachers progress from working with small groups of learners to teaching the whole class many times before they student teach. They design lesson plans, teach the lessons, assess the effectiveness of their teaching, and interview professionals. Feedback from both teachers and peer evaluators help students make informed decisions about their growth as a teacher.

By graduation, NSC education students will have over 600 hours of in-class experience and a thorough preparation in the student’s chosen area. The future of teaching looks bright for Nevada State College graduates.

STEP UP To Teaching!

The Student Teacher Enlistment Project-Undergraduate Program (STEP UP), a partnership between CCSD, CCEACF, CSN, and NSC, offers CCSD high school students an opportunity to begin college in their junior year. After high school, selected students complete their A.A. at CSN then finish their last two years at NSC. The purpose of STEP UP is to recruit and retain local students who will be well prepared to teach in economically challenged communities, thus combating high transiency rates among teachers in those schools. STEP UP participants receive grants equivalent to a $20,000 college scholarship. Currently, STEP UP has over 389 students enrolled across the three institutions, 100 of which are at Nevada State College in 2009-10 school year. Over half of the STEP UP students at NSC are first generation, bilingual and biliterate in Spanish, come from an underrepresented population, and several are earning degrees in high need areas including secondary math and science, bilingual education and special education. We celebrated the first STEP UP graduates in summer 2009!

EPSCoR Grant on Climate Change

Science education is a critical component of education for the 21st century. Nevada State College recognizes that scientific literacy is essential for all citizens in an increasingly technological world. Middle school science teachers have the potential to advance both scientific literacy in the general populace and preparation of the future technical and scientific workforce. Dr. Larry Rudd has taken the initiative to provide secondary teachers with content and pedagogy knowledge to effectively teach their students about Earth's changing climate system. As part of the EPSCoR grant on Climate Change for the state of Nevada, Dr. Rudd teaches a class on Climate Change Science for Educators at the Nevada State College campus that will be offered each summer until 2013. This class is one of the educational components of a state-wide initiative on better understanding climate change and its impact on Nevada.

Partnership Schools

Successful people know that excellence is not achieved alone. Likewise, the faculty of the School of Education at Nevada State College recognizes that quality education is not achieved in isolation and as a result, we have dedicated our program to forming partnerships with Nevada’s K-12 schools for the purpose of improving both quality of teaching and student learning. Just as differentiated instruction teaches us that all learners are unique, NSC approaches their partnerships with the understanding that each school is unique and therefore, a "cookie cutter" partnership cannot be applied to each school. As a result, each partnership begins with a focus which is collaboratively defined between NSC and the partnering school. While each NSC/school relationship is different, the results are a collaboration that is unique to each school yet still addresses the spirit of the researched-backed definition and characteristics of Professional Development Schools.

One of our partnership schools is Booker Elementary. Dr. Rho Hudson works collaboratively with this school to increase K-6 student achievement and provides our pre-service teachers authentic learning and leadership experiences. Knowing that students learn by doing, Dr. Hudson has built one-on-one tutoring sessions into her class. During these tutoring opportunities, NSC students apply what they are learning to design individualized lessons and games to build and strengthen math concepts.

Beverly Mathias, principal of Booker Elementary School, believes that the NSC course that took place on her campus was one of the key reasons Booker earned Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) status this year.