For Students: The Placement Process

IU's Early Field Experience Office secures 3000 placements each semester. Early field experience students must be placed in classrooms close enough to IU to enable them to travel and participate and still have time to take a full load of classes on campus. IU is fortunate in having the cooperation of many teachers and administrators in schools within a sixty-mile radius of the university.

Matching students with experienced teachers is like working a 1,500 piece jigsaw puzzle! We must consider not only each student's course requirements, but also his or her weekly schedule. We also consider the teaching schedule of the cooperating teacher. Generally, students are assigned a cooperating teacher/mentor and they negotiate mutually agreeable times and days for the field placement.

In high schools and middle schools or junior highs, we try to avoid placing students with teachers during teacher prep periods or over lunch. The closer to student teaching a student is, the harder we try to provide a match with a teacher in the student's major.

Supervision

The initial field experiences provide authentic issues for students to bring back to the educational psychology class and are not designed for direct supervision by an IU instructor. Subsequent experiences are directly linked to corequisite classes, and instructors try to meet the cooperating teachers and visit their students in the classroom.

Documentation

Attendance Forms

Attendance is documented in different ways for different field experiences. For most field experiences, we mail a time sheet to each cooperating teacher to document the hours the student attended. If you have questions, please call 812-856-8502.

Verification Forms

Teachers are mailed a Student Evaluation Form for each student. These forms are very important. They provide an avenue for valuable feedback to each student, and can alert IU to potential problems with pre-service teachers. The purpose of the evaluations are to give invaluable feedback and to assist instructors in determining if the student was successful in the field. If you have reservations or concerns about any of our students, please tell us. Teachers should not feel that they are hurting the student by doing so. Rather, they are giving IU the opportunity to counsel the student as early as possible, and giving students an opportunity to improve and reflect on their chosen profession. Call the Director of Early Field Experiences at 812-856-8502 with any concerns about early field experience students.

Grades

Based on attendance, observations/work samples and evaluations by the classroom teachers, IU instructors award grades of "Satisfactory" or "Fail" in the field experience courses.