Student Teaching and Praxis

Praxis
As part of the requirements for licensure, all mathematics education students must take the Praxis exam. The Praxis should be taken before student teaching. For information about the Praxis, including which Praxis exam you should take and what the passing score is, please click here. Students can obtain a voucher that pays for their first attempt taking the Praxis from the Mathematics Education Department Office (167 TMCB). Students need to get the voucher before they register to take the test.

Student Teaching
Student teaching is a full semester practicum in a public school classroom under the joint supervision of a classroom teacher and a university supervisor. This experience occurs at the end of a student’s program, after all other requirements have been completed. Student teaching is offered only during fall or winter semesters. The course number for student teaching is Mthed 476.

Application
Applications for student teaching, and subsequent teacher certification, are due mid-January for the next fall semester, and mid-September for the next winter semester. Application forms and exact application deadlines can be accessed on-line here.

Assignment and Support
After a student is accepted for student teaching, assignments are made and the student is informed of the placement. Although students are allowed to state preferences for where they would like to student teach, it is not always possible to honor these requests. Student teachers are typically paired to work together with a single classroom teacher. This allows students to give each other feedback and to have more time to reflect and prepare for their classes, because each student teacher is responsible for only half of the cooperating teacher’s workload. Mentoring and evaluations will be provided by the cooperating classroom teacher as well as by the university supervisor.

Other Capstone Experiences
Students who wish to have a student teaching experience outside of Utah may want to consider applying for the Houston or Washington, D.C. programs. For more information on these, please visit here. Note that Washington, D.C. and Houston are the only two locations outside of Utah County and South Salt Lake that BYU student teachers are allowed to complete their student teaching experience.

There is an extremely limited opportunity to fulfill the student teaching requirement by completing a year-long internship with a school that belongs to the BYU-Public Schools Partnership. Internships always begin in the fall. The application deadline for an internship is mid-January. For more information on internships, see here.