Teaching future teachers

NEA Today, Jan 1999

Pre-service teachers connect with kidsand reality-through a veteran teacher in rural Mississippi.

Connections are important in rural Sumrall, Mississippi, especially to eighth grade teacher Patricia Parrish. Through her Connections Project, pre-service teachers at the University of Southern Mississippi get a good look at their future as they work with Parrish's eighth grade English students at Sumrall Attendance Center.

Parrish started collaborating with Susan Malone, the university's director of English education, on the project four years ago. Students in Malone's Adolescent Literature and Composition Theory classes now work with eighth graders, reading and discussing literary works and exchanging book reviews.

The college students have come away with real-life classroom experience. And the eighth graders have improved their reading and writing skills, inspired by their unique relationship with their college partners. "I've noticed how the preservice teachers compare and contrast their eighth grade partners to themselves when they were students of the same age," says Parrish. "Some comment on how alike they are, but most say they never knew students could be so different.

"They begin to see what a challenge teaching diverse students with varied interests will be," she adds. "Some are amazed at the lower ability or apathetic students because, I think, most English teachers-tobe were 'good' students and imagine the day when they will teach rooms full of students like themselves.

"This project helps them see reality," says Parrish.

The junior high students meet with their college partners in person occasionally throughout the school year. But the bulk of their contact is through written correspondence.

At first, Parrish drove the papers, comments, and reviews IS miles back and forth, from Sumrall to the university in Hattiesburg, every week.

Then, in 1996, her project got wired-and computers, E-mail, and the Internet became part of the learning equation.

"Expecting the technology to make things easier was a big mistake," says Parrish. But the pre-service teachers got vital computer time.

"I've been surprised at how little contact many of them have had with computers," she notes. "So this is good for them, since they'll have to deal with technology as a tool in their teaching arsenal."

Parrish's project was sparked by a 1993 fellowship to the Bread Loaf Rural Teacher Network, a program out of Vermont's Middlebury College that encourages creative teaching and creates professional development opportunities for rural teachers.

While providing unique pre-service training for tomorrow's teachers, Parrish has found herself contemplating new insights on teaching.

The class prankster, it turns out, took writing seriously with his college partner. "You try too hard to write a good story," the eighth grader wrote after one of their essay exchanges. "Loosen up and just write."

One girl, who penned elaborate narrative letters to her college partner, wrote, "I really cannot write long stories. I guess that is not one of my talents." "Obviously, this girl can develop a piece of writing," says Parrish. "How can I make the academic writing she does as meaningful as her narrative letters to her college partner?"

Parrish has found that "even the youngest preservice teachers often comment how they forgot what it was like in junior high and how hard things often are for adolescents of this age.

"The great thing," she concludes, "is that I'm reminded of this, too." For More Information

E-mail Patricia Parrish at Patricia_ Parrish@breadnet.middlebury.edu or visit the Web at wwwdept.usm. edu/~conect/connec.html. "Good Stuff" on page 22 has more on the Bread Loaf Rural Teacher Network.