News Center Maine interviews Bishop about early field experience for educators
Penny Bishop, dean of the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Maine, spoke to News Center Maine about an educator accelerator program at RSU 34 in Old Town. The program, a partnership between the district and UMaine, the University of Maine at Augusta’s Bangor campus, Husson University and Eastern Maine Community College, places preservice educators in paid positions at the district’s five schools, allowing them to gain valuable experience, training and mentoring. “We want them to have multiple opportunities to hone their skills, but also to make sure this is a good match for them,” Bishop said. She added that early field experience programs like the educator accelerator provide an affordable pathway into a teaching career. “Something that many people don’t know about the teaching profession is that the student teaching experience, typically the capstone—the end of the profession’s training, is often a semester long. Sometimes a year. But that’s an unpaid internship,” Bishop said. “When you look at teaching compared to other professions, business, engineering, for example, medicine, those are all paid internships. In fact, education is one of the only professions that doesn’t pay its interns.”