Education Student Placement for Observations

Berrien County Schools is starting to once again host student teachers and practicum students. However, new pandemic guidelines  will be in place for College of Ed students. At this time we are still not taking short term observation students.

Berrien County Schools works with various colleges and universities in placing education students in classrooms for class observations, praciticum field experience, and student teaching. All education students seeking to be placed in a Berrien County school facility will need to go through the following procedures. ** Please Note: As of July 1, 2015 all clinical experience and student teacher candidates must have a valid  Pre-Service certificate issued by GA Professional Standards Commission.

Step 1- Placement request: All placements are coordinated through the HR Department at the Central Office.  We make an effort to place students in their school of choice but sometimes a school may already have all their education student slots full and the second school choice will be used. In order to give an education student a diversified educational experience we may purposly change a requested placement in order to increase the variety of grade level/content classrooms observed. The HR Office can be contacted at 229-686-2081 or [email protected] .

Step2- Credentials Check: All education student candidates must sumit the following documentation:

1. 2 copies of the syllabus ( one for file and one for mentor teacher)
2. Copy of college photo id.
3. Completed Student Teacher Candidate Form
4. Recent background check with purpose code “W”
5. Ethics Training- We will do the ethics training unless student can show proof of passing an ethics course or GACE Ethics test.

     Ethics course such as VSU course 2110. Transcripts do not have to be official. A Banner   

     transcript print-out will be sufficient.

     such as SPAGE or GAE must be also be provided.

A credentials check will not be needed every semester. Returning students will simply need to follow step 1 and 3.

Step 3 –Placement Verification: Once credentials check has been completed the education student candidate will be informed of placement with details as to which school and which teacher(s) have been approved for him/her to work with/observe.  This notification will also be sent to the school and mentor teacher. It will be the education student candidate’s responsibility to  contact the mentor teacher to set up an approriate time to observe, if the dates are not preset by the university.

Practicum, Internship, and Student Teacher candidates must be enrolled in a GAPSC approved  collegiate program in order to be placed in Berrien County Schools.