Chapter 8: Practicing What We Teach

Practicing What We Teach (PWWT) is a school–university-community collaboration (SUCC) through which a university provides a rural school district, situated in the same town, with faculty substitute teachers and undergraduate and graduate student assistants one morning per month. As university faculty and students spend time with elementary students, they counter Corbett’s narrative that children living in rural locations grow up hearing about other spaces and places by demonstrating that another space, the university, is just a couple blocks away in their own community (Corbett, 2007). Yet, for many families, the university may not seem accessible. This chapter presents the model for implementing this program that meets K–12 students’ learning needs by providing teachers of entire grade levels with time for group planning, individual assessment, and professional development at no cost to the district. The authors present how they worked with the school to move from an “expert,” sit and get type of professional development to the PWWT program that honors the importance of teachers working with each other, teachers having the opportunity to complete individual assessments, and teachers having the power to determine what they need for professional development rather than that directive coming from the university, the district, or even the school’s principal. Additionally, the authors write about the use of teaching graduate school psychology students through critical incidents the students experienced in the schools and the need to increase the amount of time these students spend in K–12 schools prior to the completion of their graduate program.