All supervisors have an important role to play in order to ensure quality or effectiveness. With regard to the school climate, they should support the student teachers, give a considerable amount of feedback and collaborate with the student teachers even to the point of team teaching with them (Williams, 2014). The supervisor helps to prepare pupils to work with a student teacher, provide a working area for the student teacher (a desk or table) and share responsibilities whenever possible, accepting him/her as a co-worker and professional person. The supervising teacher also acquaints the student teacher with pertinent school policies and regulations, philosophy, priorities, and assessment criteria; immediately involves the student teacher in specific classroom tasks; plans a schedule with the student teacher for assuming responsibilities of the classroom, which will allow the student teacher to assume increasing responsibility as he/she exhibits readiness to do so.
With regard to teaching, the supervising teacher also requires the student teacher to be solely responsible for all planning, preparation, instruction and evaluation for a minimum of one day before the first progress report to demonstrate the continuity of instruction and teacher accountability; guides the student teacher in preparing daily lesson plans, unit plans, and tests, and approve and critique all plans before they are taught; assists in understanding and applying evaluation techniques; demonstrates a variety of effective teaching techniques and arrange for visits to other classrooms from time to time; guides the student teacher in developing and understanding the skills of self-evaluation; evaluates the quality of the student teacher’s performance and engage in frequent conferences with the student teacher to ensure continuous progress and/or early identification of problems; encourages the student teacher to participate in community activities; helps the student teacher relate theory to practice and keeps a record of attendance and tardiness of the student teacher. The supervisor has an important role in practice teaching as a resource person, an adviser, a general morale booster, an interpreter of feedback and an assessor (Chung, 2012).
References
Chung, J. (2012). Developing Teaching Strategies through Quality Feedback. Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, September 11-14.
Williams, A. (2014). Perspectives on partnership: Secondary Initial teacher training. London: Falmer
