Facts
SITE Teacher Residency Program. . . Site-based Implementation of Teacher Education
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The SITE program at the University of Florida is a state-designated Educator Preparation Institute (EPI), created jointly in 2000 by the College of Education and Alachua County Public Schools to attract talented college graduates and mid-career changers with non-education majors to the elementary classroom. The yearlong teacher-residency program provides an alternative, accelerated pathway to teaching experience and certification for prospective teachers who possess an undergraduate degree outside of education. The internship combines supervised classroom teaching and formal study, with successful completion leading to a master’s (M.Ed.) degree in education.
Typical interns come to the program with degrees or jobs in fields such as accounting, nursing, English, business, journalism, history, psychology and family studies. Selection for entry into this full-time internship requires a 3.0 or higher undergraduate GPA; successful scores on the GRE (typically 500 on each of the verbal and quantitative sections); a stellar essay/statement of purpose; three professional letters of recommendation; and, a Statement of Status of Eligibility from the Florida Department of Education. The SITE program is an unpaid internship.
The program’s distinctive feature is the internship. The daily classroom apprenticeships, with the intern working under the guidance of a mentor teacher, bridges the gap between theory and practice while exposing interns to the demands, realities and expectations of teaching responsibilities—many of them in high-poverty schools.
Interns complete 39 credit hours of study and classroom teaching over three intense semesters, all under the supervision of a school-based mentor and a university coach. The mentor teacher and intern teach side-by-side throughout the entire school year, while the UF professor-coach makes regular classroom visits to problem-solve, observe and reflect on teaching skills, and provide individualized support. Along with their planning, teaching and coursework responsibilities, the interns become familiar with the school improvement goals and new programs initiated at their host schools. SITE coursework is taught by UF education professors and teachers in Alachua County elementary schools who all have proven expertise in K-12 teaching.
SITE, the first of two EPIs now at UF, provides a learning environment in which the interns’ previous careers and volunteer experiences supplement their classroom instruction. As graduates become new full-time teachers, their diverse educational and professional backgrounds can help shape the learning experiences of their young students.
Prospective teachers who complete the SITE internship are eligible to apply for a professional educator’s certificate from the Florida Department of Education. Graduates wishing to teach in states other than Florida should contact the Department of Education in their state of choice for certification requirements there. Please see http://www.fldoe.org/edcert/ for more information about certification in Florida.
