Fourteen weeks of student teaching is 14 times 5 which equals 70 school days. This represents 38 per cent of the school year. In elementary school teacher preparation the percentage may be even higher. It is interesting that faculties of education most often compare themselves to other professional schools, and student teaching most frequently to medical internship programs. But medicine is not the only analogy.
Law faculties have no internships until after graduation.
Interns do not conduct surgery alone. Medical internship is really training in diagnosis and not practice. This, of course, is not true. By sometimes sending students for long periods to bad schools, we may be teaching them bad lessons. Finally, the practicum is based on the myth that student teachers do not know what it is really like out there.