In Teacher Training, Some Prefer Homework

Five nights a week while her family prepares to go to bed, Marie Hatwan, 40, goes to school. Clutching a coffee mug, she heads to the tiny work space in her kitchen, where she has completed half of a teacher education program--sitting in front of her computer.

With three children, a recently disabled husband and a full-time job, Hatwan wasn’t looking forward to returning to school to earn a teaching credential.

But the Long Beach school where she was teaching with an emergency credential required her to enroll immediately in a teacher education program. When she accidentally clicked on the Web site for Cal State Teach, the university’s online teacher education program, she immediately signed up.

“This program fits my life so perfectly. I love being independent,” Hatwan said. “It’s a lot of work, but . . . I have learned so much, so fast.”

Increasingly, prospective teachers are turning to online education. Like Hatwan, they are drawn to the flexibility and efficiency of the programs.

At the same time, many school officials are drawn to anything that can expand the ranks of fully credentialed teachers.

“We need 2 million new teachers [nationwide], and the fact of the matter is we are not going to turn them out in the traditional way,” said Arthur Levine, president of the Teacher’s College at Columbia University.

But Levine and others said educators cannot simply duplicate traditional teaching methods on the Internet and assume they will produce competent teachers. Unfortunately, he said, “schools are so desperate for warm bodies that anything counts.”

Some educators, acknowledging that teachers are being held accountable to tougher standards, worry that the online programs could provide substandard training.

“It is impossible to do this all online. We have to have people working with these teachers in their classrooms,” Levine said.

Experts also say programs may be all over the board in quality. Some argue that limited face-to-face interaction may allow questionable students to slip through the pipeline.

“It’s harder to tell if students understand when you can’t see ‘the lightbulb go on,’ ” said educators in a recent report from the American Federation of Teachers.

California State University launched Cal State Teach in 1999, enrolling 300 prospective teachers. This year, about 900 students are enrolled. To qualify, students must be teaching in schools. Classified as interns, they complete course work toward full credentials and simultaneously apply what they are learning in the classroom. That exempts them from an additional period of student teaching.

Upon completing the program and passing the requisite state-mandated exams, students become fully credentialed instructors.

Passwords allow students to log into classrooms at their leisure. Courses use bulletin boards, real-time chats, e-mail and, occasionally, live Webcasts to deliver instruction, assess student learning and accommodate dialogue between students and instructors. Most programs include some face-to-face sessions on technology in the classroom and hands-on science activities that are difficult to teach online.

But can students of education develop the skills needed to teach a class wriggling students if they spend 90% of their training time in front of a computer?

“It would never take the place of a classroom environment where a master teacher can demonstrate exemplary teaching practices and the [student] teacher can see the interaction of the teachers with the students,” said Gwen Gross, superintendent of the Beverly Hills School District.

At Cal State Teach, students are expected to read assignments from the textbooks mailed to their homes and lectures posted online. They must participate in online group discussions and are responsible for creating weekly lesson plans.

A mentor at the intern’s school evaluates the prospective teacher once a week, and a Cal State faculty member visits student classrooms at least once a month to observe.

“If I had a traditional professor, how often would I be able to call them up and say, ‘I have this problem’?” said Catherine Rometsch, 33, a second-grade teacher at Fletcher Street Elementary in Orange County. She said the feedback from her mentors has been instrumental to her success.

Rometsch recently created a newsletter for parents in English and Spanish. Not only did it impress fellow teachers, but it also fulfilled a course requirement.

“Everything I learn is something that I can use,” Rometsch said. “And that’s what I’m graded on, how I use it.”