Alternative Teacher Certification Internship
When the student has found a position as a teacher, MCC will continue to provide assistance and guidance throughout the first year of teaching in a Texas school. Internship begins as soon as the student accepts a teaching position, any time during the course of either the Pedagogy and Professional Responsibilities or the teaching methods classes or after completing the classes. Over the course of a full school year, the student intern will work with the campus principal, an assigned school mentor, and the supervising mentor. Students will attend the Internship classes at MCC, Internship I (TCIN 1004) or Internship II (TCIN 1005). The internship class experience is designed to help the student intern by providing assistance and guidance while they are actually teaching. (ATC students must inform MCC as soon as a teaching position is accepted).
All Alternative Teacher Certification students must take the internship as soon as possible after they accept a teaching position. The Internship should preferably be taken in consecutive semesters.
McLennan Communitys College's Alternative Certification Program is a highly supervised experience for our interns. Our supervising mentors evaluate our interns twice each semester, have post-conferences with interns and do both formal and informal consulting on a regular and as needed basis. MCC pays a stipend for school mentors to assist our interns on a daily basis. The mentor does monthly evaluations and conferences with the intern as well as monthly checklist to monitor intern's progress. Interns are required to observe their school mentor once a month also. Both of these monthly visits are documented and the documentation is turned in to the internship instructor each month. Supervising mentors are also required to conference with administrators and school mentors as they complete a year end recommendation form for certification form that our program requires. Supervising mentors also, as needed, complete a professional growth plan that outlines areas in need of improvement with a timeline for implementation. This is only done for interns who are need of assistance. Interns meet internship class once a month for thee hours and have a clinically supervised internship during the school year.
Students teach/work 183 days x 7 hours = 1,281 hours a year or 640.5 each semester; plus, the internship classes meet 15 contact hours a semester (total of 30 semester hours).
Beginning Fall 2008, students in the ATC program who request Probationary Certification will need to be registered in an internship-type course during the school year even though they may have already taken a year of internship to fulfill SBEC's requirement. This requirement states that districts hiring teachers who hold a probationary certificate because they are participating in an approved Alternative Certification Program must still review and verify the highly qualified status for those teachers.