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Teachers In Training Take Lessons In Virtual Classrooms

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By MARILYN BROWN

mbrown@tampatrib.com

Published: January 19, 2009

The latest job being added to the "working from home" list is teacher intern.

With the number of students taking online classes growing, it made sense to University of Central Florida and Florida Virtual School officials to have new teachers practice in the virtual world.

The groups recently announced a pilot program to provide part of the practical internship training for budding teachers via "webinars" with virtual teachers and conference calls that bring teachers to students and their families online.

"This is a pilot that could go lots of directions," said Mike Hynes, chairman of the teaching and learning department at UCF's College of Education. The six student volunteers in the pilot program met with their virtual teachers Tuesday and will start this week, he said.

The students are all juniors. At UCF, in Orlando, education majors intern for a semester in their junior and senior years, Hynes said.

After seven weeks in the virtual internships, students will spend seven weeks in a traditional classroom so they have both experiences. That will give students flexibility with traditional teaching jobs in Florida, which lately are harder to come by, and with Florida Virtual Schools, Hynes said.

Florida Virtual School served more than 63,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade last year and more than doubled the number of full-time students from the previous year.

UCF and the University of South Florida in Tampa are the top suppliers of Florida teachers.

"This is very cool, but we're not doing anything like that," said Kim Tucker, USF College of Education spokeswoman.

In Hillsborough schools, 700 to 800 interns each year from USF and other colleges spend a semester working in classrooms their senior year before graduation. It's getting tougher to place interns, partly because teachers must take a special class before taking in an intern, said Chuck Fleming, the Hillsborough County School District's director of staff development.

A combination of a virtual and classroom internship makes sense, Fleming said. He added, however, "The face-to face with teachers, kids, parents right before college graduation is probably the single most important part of the educational experience."

"It's a really good idea for a teacher to have some experience in virtual education," Fleming said. "The future of education is going to push a lot more in that direction."

Reporter Marilyn Brown can be reached at (813) 259-8069.

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