April 30, 2019 | UHCL Staff
University of Houston-Clear Lake’s College of Education hosted the second Clear Creek ISD Teacher Education Training Symposium in March, aimed at high school juniors and seniors interested in become Texas public school educators. More than 140 students who are participating in the Teacher Education Training program in their respective high schools attended the event. It was the second part of the first symposium held last fall, covering topics both students and teachers deemed key for those preparing to become educators.
“We aren’t experts in all areas, and our students had individual issues they wanted to cover,” said Clear Springs High School’s TET instructor, Summer Brauer. “We brought in five outside experts in different areas of education who were willing to help train our students, put new ideas together, and prepare them for real life.”
Cherilin Saladrigas, Clear Brook High School’s TET instructor, said the topics were broader than the ones covered in the fall symposium. “These were critical, need-to-know topics for students getting their field experiences,” she said. “Students told us they wanted to know more about the arts in education, so we brought in an expert in that,” she said. “One student came back from hearing another speaker discuss strategies for teaching gifted and talented students and said she’d figured out that this was how she wanted to specialize as an educator.”
The purpose of TET, continued Brauer, is to provide high school students with teaching experiences to determine whether or not they’d like to pursue a career in public education. “We give them a chance to find out what it’s really like to be a teacher before they go to college,” she said. “Ultimately, we hope these students will finish their education degree and come back to Clear Creek ISD. They’re already getting a foundation for what the district’s core values are, the curriculum, how we teach, and our beliefs as educators.”
The beauty of it, said Clear Creek High School’s TET instructor Elizabeth Radicioni, was that if students complete the two-year TET, maintain a certain grade point average and meet other criteria, Clear Creek ISD will give them a letter of intent to interview upon their graduation from high school. “Then, if they go to college, major in education and meet the necessary criteria, the district will guarantee them a job interview. This is an incredible opportunity,” she said. “One of my former students came back here and was voted Teacher of the Year at Hyde Elementary.”
Clear Creek ISD’s Executive Director of Curriculum and Instruction Susan Silva said the district was leading the way among school districts of the area with the TET program and with the opportunity offered to students who wish to return to their home school district to teach. The topics chosen at the symposium are student-driven.
“Afterwards, they come back and reflect with us about what they learned,” said Leda Smith, TET instructor at Clear Falls High School. “I have two former students who have now graduated from college, and attended the CCISD job fair with their letters of intent to interview.”
All six educators are UH-Clear Lake College of Education alumni. “My methods courses at UHCL were instrumental in giving me a model to set up my Principles of Education and Training and Teacher Education Training courses at Clear Falls,” said Smith, who received her Bachelor of Science in Early Childhood Care and Education in 1994. “I model lessons for students, show them what teachers do, and then discuss the pedagogy behind those best practices in teaching that we use in CCISD. Those methods courses from UHCL had a lot of applications to the job I do now.”
“The symposium’s goal is to give high school students in the program every opportunity to learn all the pieces involved with being an educator,” said Silva, who received her Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership at UHCL in 2010. “These ladies are teachers, but there are so many other elements in becoming an educator. The symposium gives students different perspectives on education, and all the tools to be as ready as possible when they become teachers.”
For more information about UHCL’s College of Education, visit www.uhcl.edu/education/.
