The professional semester is the culminating experience in the Teacher Education Program and is a teacher candidate’s final clinical experience. Student teachers should take every advantage of this semester to truly experience and understand the day-to-day activities of a music educator. With that in mind, the music department expects the following from teacher candidates during their professional semester:

• The understanding that teacher candidates may have to drive upwards of 1 hour to get to their teaching site. This will require reliable transportation. Student teaching placements are not lightly decided. They take collaboration between the teacher candidate, academic advisor, site placement coordinator, and the schools to find a student teaching site that will provide the most superior student teaching experience.
• Student teaching sites must be approved by the music faculty supervisor. Incomplete student teaching site paperwork will not be signed.
• Student teachers will be expected to follow through with the expectations and requirements of their cooperating teacher (including but not limited to concerts, contests, festivals, parades, athletic events, before/after school rehearsals, etc.)
• Students must make and keep copies of all paperwork related to teacher education for their records.

The above expectations help to address the following National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) guidelines for teacher education programs:

• “Professional education components should be dealt with in a practical context, relating the learning of educational principles to the student’s day-by-day work in music. Students must be provided opportunities for various types of observation and teaching.”
• “Ability to teach music at various levels to different age groups and in a variety of classroom and ensemble settings in ways that develop knowledge of how music works syntactically as a communication medium and developmentally as an agent of civilization. This set of abilities includes effective classroom and rehearsal management.”
•  “These activities [clinical experiences], as well as continuing laboratory experiences, must be supervised by qualified music personnel from the institution and the cooperating schools. The choice of sites must enable students to develop competencies consistent with [NASM standards for the Baccalaureate Degree in Music Education], and must be approved by qualified music personnel from the institution.”