“The best thing is that you’re making change every day. And that’s why you go into education, to make a change,” Director of the Center for Teacher Education Valerie Dobbs said.

Dobbs is in her fourth year at CMU and has been involved in the field for 30 years. She and her faculty have made the ideas of trust and demeanor an important factor in assessing the teaching abilities of the 450 or more students that are in the program.

“We look at disposition a lot,” Dobbs said. “We help with that a lot, because we want to make sure you’ve got the right disposition to be trusted with kids,” Dobbs said. “A learning relationship with a teacher is probably one of the most intimate experiences. You’re really sharing intellectual life on such an intimate level, so it’s important to have good rapport with your students.”

The placement method for students starting their internships is a unique model that has been recognized by school districts across the state and nation. It begins with an individual from human resources for a particular institution meeting with the program, who shares characteristics of the teacher represented. This gives faculty an opportunity to look at a number of the candidates within the program at CMU to determine the best match.

“We match based both on the strengths of the mentor and what the candidate needs,” Dobbs said. “We really look at personalities, we look at teaching styles, and we look at where growth needs to occur for each candidate.”

At 800 hours of internship required before graduation, Colorado nearly doubles the total required by other states in the nation. This is important because it is like they are graduating as almost a second year teacher.

Students will participate in a number of methods with the mentor teachers they have been paired with, from minor tasks to leading the classrooms in their daily lessons.

Kaitlin Marcotte is a senior graduating from CMU in December with a degree in Elementary Education and an emphasis in Mathematics. She is currently participating in her pre-internship at Appleton Elementary School where she will be doing her actual internship as well.

“We’re watching our teacher, we’re working with students, and we do have to teach lessons.” Marcotte said. “My mentor teacher lets me teach a lot, so I have quite a bit of flexibility. We take over the class when we’re interning, so next semester I’ll be taking over his whole class. I’m getting my feet wet right now and getting used to that. You learn a lot through experience.”

With recent problems in the economy, a lot of professions get singled out as ones that are struggling and aren’t going to be hiring people in the future. Education is no stranger to this, but Dobbs clarifies that a lot of the reports coming out claiming there are no jobs for teachers are misleading.

“I hate those reports, because (schools) are always hiring teachers,” Dobbs said. “District 51 had all kinds of cutbacks this past year, everybody heard about that, but they still hired over 85 new teachers. In the next ten years, we are going to have a dire teacher shortage in this country. Don’t believe the headline.”

For prospective students Marcotte shares that the best thing you can do, besides volunteering to work in classrooms, is meeting with an adviser to get an idea for what you need to take.

“I found out the hard way by taking a lot of extra classes,” Marcotte said. “I met with my adviser for the first time when I was a junior and I found out I had two more years left. When you have to work for free that kind of limits the amount of time you can actually work, but just saving up and applying for scholarships helps to make sure it’s not a stress when you intern, on top of everything else.”