Internships, Practica and Clinical Experiences

• The Governor issued an executive order on March 18^th to suspend in-person instruction at all public and private schools in Colorado from March 23 to April 17 but that all districts must assist students and families in accessing alternative learning, and continue to provide free and reduced lunch and breakfast to students.
• Aurora is on extended spring break through March 27^th. They are currently working on plans to provide remote/online learning. 
• DPS is on extended spring break through April 6^th. They are also working on plans to provide remote/online learning and will communicate with schools/families soon about those plans.
• Jeffco has been engaged on online/remote teaching all this week (March 16-20^th) and our TCs have been incredible innovators and leaders alongside their CTs in this endeavor! They will be on spring break (March 23-27) and return to online/remote teaching March 30^th. Check out this video about the district’s preparations and this collage of images of what remote learning looked like this week at one school as they’ve asked students, teachers, and families to post pictures with a common hashtag.
• Mapleton extended spring break but also stayed connected with students and families this week to provide learning and well-being supports, with many of our TCs involved in this endeavor as well! Spring break is March 23-27^th, and the district is currently developing a more comprehensive remote/online learning plan to begin after spring break. 
• All Denver Boys & Girls Clubs and Hand & Heart after school programs remain closed March 16-April 6 in alignment with DPS extended spring break closure. We are waiting to hear about any additional updates.

TCs will continue to work along-side their clinical teachers to support student learning and overall student well-being, only now through the use of a variety of technology supports depending on the district context.

So how will we support you in doing this?

Next week (date/time TBD, but likely Wednesday (3/26), Thursday(3/27) or Friday(3/28)) we will provide a live webinar accessible to all TCs and Site Teams to support you in making this transition, leveraging many of the skills you already have as online learners yourself and introducing you to helpful resources and strategies you can use with your CT.

We are collaborating with CU Denver Faculty member, Sean Morris who is a nationally recognized expert in digital pedagogy and online/remote learning to provide the webinar. Please look for a separate email on Monday 3/24 with more information. We realize this is spring break, but so many of our TCs are in the midst of rethinking how they will design their lesson plans/concurrent assignments in preparation for students to “return” March 30^th or April 7^th and know this information is critical sooner rather than later. We have been connecting with many of our current TCs and site teams who have already been experiencing this type of teaching this week to quickly learn what works and where are the challenges so their insight will be included in this webinar with opportunity to go deeper to ask questions, collaborate, and share! A recording of the webinar will be provided afterwards for anyone who is unable to attend.

At this point in time, again, we do not anticipate students will need to make up any hours. For early internships (1930, 2930, and 3930) we are working to adjust your field experience hour requirements accordingly. For our professional year residency students, CDE is meeting with all Colorado Teacher Prep programs on Monday March 23^rd to provide an update given this current situation and if anything changes we will provide updated information to you, but we don’t anticipate that at this time.

• EDHD 1930, 2930 and 3930 students should continue to attend their regularly scheduled seminars with their on-campus instructor in the new online format. We met as a team this week to adjust expectations for the Inquiry Projects and other field-experience related assignments, so please look for communication soon from your instructors about that. Also, if you attended seminars/meetings directly at your school site with the site professor/site coordinator, please look for communication from them about how those will be handled.
• NxtGEN PEIs will continue to attend NxtGEN Cohort meetings virtually as directed by Tania Hogan. If NxtGEN PEIs attended seminars/meetings directly at your school site with the site professor/site coordinator, please look for communication from them about how those will be handled.
• All candidates in their professional year residency internships will also continue to engage in an online version of their CLCs . By this time, you should have heard from your site team about how this is working for your school site. 

We have asked all faculty to be flexible with assignment due dates and redesign assignments. They started to make adjustments last week assuming that schools would hopefully return after the extended spring breaks. Given the Governor’s announcement on Wednesday March 18 to extend the closure of schools, many faculty will continue to adapt assignments over the coming weeks based on the changing status of our school partners. Please be patient as they adjust to this constantly shifting context and reach out if you have questions.

Yes.  We received notice this week that all Praxis testing sites have been closed through April 16^th, so we have extended the PRAXIS deadline for all candidates going into their final internship this fall to June 1^st.  It is CRITICAL that you continue studying (reach out to the Success Center for supports/resources if needed).  Anyone registered for a Praxis test between March 18^th and April 16^th should have received notification about how to reschedule their exam.

As of March 13th, 2020, the university has asked us to cancel any remaining service learning activities. If you served 8 hours or more at your service learning site before March 13th, you can complete an abbreviated version of the service learning paper. If you completed fewer than 8 hours before March 13th, you will complete an alternative assignment. Please contact your instructor for details specific to your course.