Cooperating  Teachers
College of Education

The success of Roosevelt University’s teaching preparation program is dependent not only on the efforts of our faculty, but on the contributions of several hundred cooperating teachers each year. The College of Education greatly appreciates these efforts expended on behalf of our students – and on behalf of the teaching profession’s future.

The College’s field placement officers within the Office of Student Resources work closely with school district offices and principals to provide field experiences that connect coursework with practical realities in schools. School and district-office staff members also help us match our student teachers with experienced classroom teachers.

Recordkeeping

In addition to welcoming our students into your classrooms, cooperating teachers are asked to fill out a few simple forms.  Those of you who host student observers complete a brief form verifying the hours our students were in your classrooms. By recording the student’s hours, you have a handy form for keeping a log of your hours as well. These can be used for your certificate-renewal plan. If your school welcomes several observers over the course of a school year, you may be eligible for a course voucher from Roosevelt as well.

Cooperating Teacher Orientation

To aid teachers planning to host our teacher candidates, the College holds a brief orientation session at the beginning of each semester. Cooperating teachers receive an invitation to this at the end of the preceding semester; these sessions are held on both our Chicago and Schaumburg campuses simultaneously. In addition to learning about our expectations and the College of Education’s Conceptual Framework, cooperating teachers have an opportunity to meet their student teacher’s university supervisor.   

Participating teachers are offered light refreshments, receive one CPDU for attending, and have an opportunity to meet other members of our faculty. They also receive a copy of our Student Teaching Handbook and the Mentor Teacher Guide; teachers who are not able to attend are sent these through the mail.  Most of the questions you might have are addressed in these two guides. Your student teacher’s university supervisor will visit several times during the semester on a day arranged in advance. Your student teacher will also meet with his or her supervisor and other teacher candidates for a weekly seminar.

Student Teacher Evaluation

Our student teaching programs vary from 5 to 15 weeks in duration; some programs require a variety of experiences, but they all add up to 15 weeks overall. Your student teacher may be with you for all or part of the period. For the 5-week experiences, cooperating teachers need to fill out only one evaluation form; for the longer experiences, we ask for both a midterm and a final evaluation. We also ask that these forms be filled out on line. 

You can access the Student Teacher Evaluation Form by clicking here;

Course Vouchers

Roosevelt University awards to each cooperating teacher a voucher that can be used for a course in any one of the university’s five colleges. At the end of the student teaching period, the Office of Student Resources sends out a thank you letter that is used to verify the holder as a supervising teacher for obtaining CPDUs and the course voucher.

As noted above, schools that welcome multiple numbers of our students are also entitled to vouchers. These are usually sent directly to school principals.

 

For further information:  Detailed information on Roosevelt University’s teacher preparation programs are available by clicking on any of the following links:

• Reading, Early Childhood Education, and Special Education
• Elementary Education
• Secondary Education
• Music Education (in Chicago College of Performing Arts)

If you would like to learn more about the College’s graduate programs in Educational Leadership and Counseling and Human Services (which includes school counseling), please click on those links or investigate opportunities in the University’s other colleges by returning to Roosevelt’s homepage.

You are welcome to contact staff members in the Office of Student Resources at the numbers given below. Monica Kielar works with all field experience and student teaching placements in the northwest and far northwest suburbs. Monica also oversees the daily operations of the office. Angela Tidwell works primarily with Chicago Public Schools.