Interns take a course on parent engagement, which requires home visits. The partner schools have opened Parent Centers designed to offer professional development opportunities for parents and provide them with the skills to volunteer in the classroom and be advocates for the school in the neighborhood. The Parent Centers make computers accessible to parents, who can check out one of 10 laptop computers from several of the partner schools. At UTEP, we are changing public schools and teacher preparation programs at the same time. Students preparing to be elementary and secondary teachers now work in cohorts, are scheduled to take their university classes together, and spend two semesters in the field at Partner Schools under the joint supervision of university faculty and public school teachers who act as clinical faculty.
Teacher preparation is field-based .
Elementary, middle school and secondary interns go through the program in cohorts and spend two semesters in the classroom for a total of 650 contact hours of fieldwork. The integration of technology and effective teaching receives high priority . All participating professional development school classrooms, as well as university teacher education classrooms, are equipped with at least one multimedia computer workstation. The quality and relevance of staff development receives high priority. The El Paso Collaborative for Academic Excellence provides teachers, mentor teachers, and administrators with continuous staff development activities.