n WORKFORCE
his preservice classes helped him develop, he says. Garmire
watches him greet every student by name when they come
into class and thank them for hard work. Garmire says Wal-
lace’s classroom is full during lunch hour — he eats with stu-
dents, answers questions, finds out about them. And before
tests, Wallace tells students how much academic integrity
matters.
Wallace walked to the front of the class and held up the
phone: “This is what I was talking about. Academic integri-
ty. Taking responsibility for your own work.” He asked that
whomever had sent the picture see him after class, and the
student did. Both students got zeros and had to work hard
to make up for the poor grade. Garmire says Wallace man-
aged to call out the behavior without shaming the kids. There
were no more cheating episodes in his classes. Word has got-
ten around; students in other periods put away their phones
before tests, and Garmire says “you can hear a pin drop” in
testing periods.
For Liebert, just-in-time coaching is the active ingredient
in SCOE’s program. Coaches meet with interns regularly but
are also available on the fly 24/7, she says. Garmire says he al-
most quit during his semester of student teaching back in the
early 1980s under the traditional model because he had no
support. “It’s someone in your corner,” he says of coaching.
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For those who can handle the demanding schedule —
full-time teaching and classes or workshops on nights or
weekends — the economics of an internship can be attrac-
tive. SCOE’s tuition is $16,500 for the 2 1/2 years, but interns
draw a salary if they are hired. (If they’re not hired, they pay
only the initial $1,500 for the five months of coursework.) At
Marysville, Wallace says he came on at a regular starting
teacher’s pay of $50,000 with full benefits, though he says
some districts SCOE works with offer less than that for in-
terns. Tuition for university-based residency and internship
programs typically is higher, but those students also are el-
igible for federal financial aid, which SCOE’s interns aren’t.
The number of teachers coming to the profession
through a program like SCOE’s is growing. Statewide, the
number of people getting into teaching via a county office
of education or school district internship doubled in the last
five years, to a total of 885 in the 2017-18 school year. Over-
all, fully a quarter of the state’s teachers now enter on some
kind of intern credential.
THE PROMISE OF TEACHER RESIDENCIES
Back in the cockpit, the teacher resident is cousin to the stu-
dent pilot who watches a master pilot f ly and takes over at
points along the way — all the while taking courses and