Teacher Candidate Support in the Era of the Delta Variant of COVID-19
Location
Session 3 Presentations - COVID-19 & Higher Education
Proposal Track
Research Project
Session Format
Presentation
Abstract
The global pandemic disrupted the education for students with disabilities in their classrooms and the classroom experience for teacher candidates. This presentation will describe how one education preparation program (EPP) had to transition their cohort model from face-to-face to online instruction in two weeks and simultaneously support their teacher candidates’ pedagogy and mental health needs.
The EPP provided guidance to their undergraduate and Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) teacher candidates on how to deliver instruction via virtual tools in order to meet the social and academic needs of their students with disabilities. The EPP had to also provide mental health support for teacher candidates who were thrust into an unfamiliar teaching setting during an unsettled time in world history. In addition, faculty were concerned about their own health because some students chose to decline wearing masks. The goal of this presentation is to highlight strategies used by the EPP to maintain program integrity when forced to move to distance learning models of instruction and how they implemented mental health checks on their teacher candidates in order to help build resiliency. The presentation will also highlight strategies faculty used to remain medically safe while supporting their students.
Keywords
teacher, candidate, pandemic, health
Professional Bio
Dr. Roddran Grimes is currently an Associate Professor of Special Education at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, Georgia. She is a cohort mentor leader for students and teaches research-based courses for the Special Education undergraduate and graduate programs. She is a former Assistant Professor of Special Education at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho. Dr. Grimes was educated at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Indiana where she earned her Ph.D. degree in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration in Special Education.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Grimes, Roddran Ph.D. and Sumowski, Robert F. Ed.D., "Teacher Candidate Support in the Era of the Delta Variant of COVID-19" (2021). Georgia Educational Research Association Conference. 43.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gera/2021/2021/43
Teacher Candidate Support in the Era of the Delta Variant of COVID-19
Session 3 Presentations - COVID-19 & Higher Education
The global pandemic disrupted the education for students with disabilities in their classrooms and the classroom experience for teacher candidates. This presentation will describe how one education preparation program (EPP) had to transition their cohort model from face-to-face to online instruction in two weeks and simultaneously support their teacher candidates’ pedagogy and mental health needs.
The EPP provided guidance to their undergraduate and Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) teacher candidates on how to deliver instruction via virtual tools in order to meet the social and academic needs of their students with disabilities. The EPP had to also provide mental health support for teacher candidates who were thrust into an unfamiliar teaching setting during an unsettled time in world history. In addition, faculty were concerned about their own health because some students chose to decline wearing masks. The goal of this presentation is to highlight strategies used by the EPP to maintain program integrity when forced to move to distance learning models of instruction and how they implemented mental health checks on their teacher candidates in order to help build resiliency. The presentation will also highlight strategies faculty used to remain medically safe while supporting their students.
