EPSB talks about plan for student teachers

At Wednesday night’s Evangeline Parish School Board meeting, board members discussed the State’s new plan for student teachers.
During the Assistant Superintendent Darwan Lazard’s comments, he said, “The State is now looking at making the student teaching period a whole year. They are also looking at giving compensation to the candidate (student teacher) and compensation would be given to the person over the (student) teacher.
“We have some real concerns because it will cost the district more money. This is an added burden We see it as an added burden and an unfunded mandate that would be passed along to the district.”
Student teaching is when college students working towards earning a degree in Education teach in a classroom setting for their last semester of school.
In previous years only one semester of student teaching was required, however now students will required to teach for a full school year before graduating.
According to the board’s president Wayne Dardeau, the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) passed having student teaching for a year a couple of weeks ago.
Dardeau said, “The BESE vote was six to five in favor of making it a year.”
Although one year of student teaching is now required, the compensation that the State is looking into being able to provide to student teachers and the teacher over them is not set in stone. This is mostly due to the fact that how this will be funded has yet to be figured out.
The board’s vice president Scott Limoges however, had a suggestion.
Limoges said, “If they are looking at compensation to me it should come out of the student’s tuition.
“The student is spending $5,000 a semester yet they are only spending so many hours at that school. To me it seems like the university should reimburse the school because you are basically the teacher of that student.”
Limoges also expressed his concern about how this could affect the number of students graduating with education degrees.
Limoges said, “What’s going to end up happening is they are going to start shifting people out of education. They will go into General Studies, do four years, and then go take a praxis test and then not have to go mess with all of that. I don’t know what people are thinking over there.”
No matter their feeling on the matter though, student teaching will from here on out be for a full school year.