Student Teaching: Early Childhood Practicum Guide

This comprehensive text covers up-to-date, helpful information and ?how tos? for early childhood education students enrolled in a student teaching practicum course. It clearly explains the student's professional duties and responsibilities, and the mechanics of hands-on teaching with young children under the guidance of a cooperating teacher in a functioning classroom. It also clarifies the students? interactions with their college course supervisor(s). Chapters are designed to encourage contemplative and reflective student teacher thought. Comprehension of the material strengthens the student's display and development of teacher competencies and skills, and facilitates successful course completion. The text promotes the understanding of professionally accepted practice, ethics, classroom management, and individualized and group program planning and instruction. The communication skills that typify effective team teaching and reduce common classroom problems during student teaching are described and detailed. This approach is appropriate with the beginning educator's need for ongoing professional commitment, and vocational growth. Case studies, examples, charts and visuals are presented throughout, and case scenarios apprise readers of real-life situations and children that other student teachers have encountered. Special- needs children and infant-toddler classroom placement particulars are addressed to alert students to current practices in those student teacher placements. Chapters dealing with parent and family interactions give considerable attention to the development of school-home partnerships that enhance children's life long learning, and educational success.

Jeanne M. Machado's experience in the early childhood education field has included full-time assignment as community college instructor and department chairperson. Her duties included supervision of early childhood education students at two on-campus laboratory child development centers at San Jose City College and Evergreen Valley College, as well as child centers in the local community. Her teaching responsibilities encompassed early childhood education, child development, and parenting courses. She received her MA from San Jose State University and her vocational community college life credential with coursework from the University of California at Berkeley. Her experience includes working as a teacher, director, and an early childhood education consultant in public early childhood programs, parent cooperative programs, and private early childhood centers. Ms. Machado is an active participant in several professional organizations that relate to the education and well-being of young children and their families. She is a past president of California Community College Early Childhood Educators and the Peninsula Chapter of the California Association for the Education of Young Children. Her authoring efforts with Dr. Helen Meyer-Botnarescue produced a 2007 text in sixth edition for student teachers entitled STUDENT TEACHING: EARLY CHILDHOOD PRACTICUM GUIDE. An additional text, EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES IN EDUCATION, was co-authored with Romana Reynolds in 2006. Both are published by Thomson Delmar Learning. Ms. Machado consults with teachers and administrators and interacts with young children in classrooms in Cascade, Idaho and San Jose, California.

Helen C. Botnarescue, PhD, is a Professor Emeritus at the California State University. She currently chairs the Heritage Committee of the Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI), the International Committee for the National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators (NAECTE), and co-chairs the Retired Members' Committee of OMEP. She is a three-time president of the California ACEI, and has served twice as a Region 10 representative to NAECTE. Helen is a regular contributor to several publications including Childhood Education, the ACEI journal The Activist, and Our Heritage Today, two of the newsletters of ACEI. Dr. Botnarescue mentors new teachers and advises the principal of her church school and regularly tutors children for the Redwood City Elementary School District.