* Cooperating Professionals
Join our Teacher Pathway Team – Become a Cooperating Professional!
The University of Oregon is looking for welcoming, effective, and experienced educational professionals to serve as cooperating professionals (CP) for licensure candidates. This includes instructional mentor coaches, cooperating teachers, district supervisors, and clinical supervisors.
The UO is a nationally accredited educator preparation provider (EPP) working to prepare educators to thrive in Oregon PreK-12 schools. In alignment with TSPC, our programs work to prepare preservice educators as authentic, self-aware, caring, collaborate, and equitable members of your learning community.
Each spring we work with district partners to recruit effective and experienced teachers, to open their classrooms to an educator candidate. Cooperating professionals supervise, model, nurture, guide, and evaluate candidates toward growing excellent educators!
Our candidates provide eager assistance to you and your classroom, supporting different aspects of your instruction including, planning, preparation, technology-based learning, assessment, and delivery instruction.
You and your candidate will receive meaningful individualized support from an experienced university supervisor who helps provide regular planning and instructional coaching and guides the team through the licensure observation and evaluation tasks.
As a mentor, your instructional support and demonstration of professional practices are critical to a candidates development. In recognition of your time and generous nurturing, the UO provides a competitive stipend package, typically administrated through your district.
Minimum Approval Criteria and Qualifications
- License: Hold a qualified TSPC license (SLP requires ASHA and state licensed).
- Experience/approval: Have three or more years of fulltime experience and site approval.
- Credentials: Be certified in the same (or closely related) endorsement area.
- Trainings: Participate in 1-hour program trainings
As a Cooperating Professional You will:
- Help student teacher candidates get a positive start on their career.
- Foster a collaborative mentoring relationship with an eager partner willing to assist you.
- Learn from your candidate as they work to apply their ideas, new learning tools, and current educational research to their practice.
District Cooperating Professionals earn a stipend and professional development units, in terms where licensure evaluation and assessment tasks are required. Respective districts also receive correlate reduced tuition vouchers.
Check with your HR Office to determine how these benefits are dispersed.
TSPC Standards for Supporting Teacher Candidates:
- Mentors are to supervise candidates in the classroom, providing in-person support and should not be out of the classroom for extended periods of time.
- Candidates are university students, protected under FERPA regulations.
- Programs will assign a University Supervisor to assist mentors and the teacher candidate throughout student teaching practicum terms.
Cooperating Professional Training & Resources
1. Oregon Pre-service Education Network (OPEN) new & returning CP Training
If you are new or looking for some Cooperating Professional (CP) training, we encourage you to sign up for one of the upcoming Oregon Preservice Education Network (OPEN) online orientation trainings (4:30-7:00pm: Oct 4, Jan 23, Feb 8). OPEN CPs trainings are facilitated jointly by higher education and K-12 school district representatives. Trainings provide helpful ideas for working with and supporting educator candidates in becoming the best educators as possible for our K-12 students. Orientation outcomes:
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- Deepen skills in building relationships between cooperating educators and educator candidates
- Enhance strategies to engage in and share the thinking process regarding teaching and learning
- Build repertoire of coaching/mentoring skills to work with an educator candidate
- Reflect on being a culturally responsive mentor as well as the dynamics identity and power may hold within the mentor/mentee relationship
UO provides trainings, supports, and resources to UO Cooperating Professional / Mentor via an Instructional Canvas (link). Each year, Cooperating Professionals will be added to this site. The site includes UO and Program orientation information, explanation of assessment tools (and link to Watermark/TK20), and other resources that you and your candidate’s university supervisor can access throughout your placement. Cooperating Professionals are added to the Site as “students”. If you don’t already have a https://canvas.instructure.com account, you will need to create an account. You will receive an invite to a training to this site and find video introductions in the site. If you have issues accessing this site, please contact coeplacement@uoregon.edu | 541-346-1397
updated: 9/27/23