Since communication is a key piece of the student teaching puzzle, cooperating teachers and teacher candidates should also schedule lengthier conferences once a week to plan for student learning and promote reflection and professional growth.

• Lesson Planning - from the beginning, the teacher candidate should be included in planning for upcoming lessons – at first observing and then gradually taking over this responsibility under the cooperating teacher’s supervision.

• The cooperating teacher can use this time to speak about their informal observations of the teacher candidate for that week. The cooperating teacher can use the performance objectives from the CPAST form to guide their observations.

• It could be helpful to provide notes to the teacher candidate, so they are able to keep thinking about points you make, as they may not hear it all in the conversation. This could simply be a copy of your working CPAST form used to document evidence for performance objectives.

If a teacher candidate is not making adequate progress, please alert the university supervisor immediately. In some cases, a Success Plan may be required which formalizes the progress of the teacher candidate in a more structured manner.