Practicums: What every education student looks forward to—a chance to put into practice everything we’ve learned in our classes, make professional and personal connections, and create valuable relationships with our students. All while receiving no whatsoever from the University’s Practicum Office or the Faculty of Education.
The practicums we all look forward to during our month-long stretches of class on West Campus can quickly become a nightmarish experience, due entirely to the actions, or inaction, of the Faculty and Practicum Office. Something needs to change—both across the Faculty of Education and especially in how the Practicum Office operates. Something has to give if this experience is ever going to become manageable, let alone meaningful, for teacher candidates at Queen’s.
The reality of being a student in Queen’s Faculty of Education looks a lot like unpaid forty-hour work weeks, spending hundreds of dollars in gas money to commute to schools, and a complete lack of classroom management preparation from any of our education classes taken during the year. Many of us education students feel completely stranded and on our own when sent out into a school board without adequate from our institution—the opposite of what the Faculty preaches.
Littered on the Faculty of Education website are countless resources for student wellbeing, from counselors, to therapy, and even student-led groups and resources. We attend workshops on how to avoid burnout. We’re told mental health matters. We’re taught to build comionate, equitable classrooms for our future students. And yet, those values don’t seem to apply when it comes to how the Faculty, and the Practicum Office more specifically, treat us.
The Practicum Office is the centre of this. They’re the ones in charge of finding placements for every teacher candidate in the program, placing each education student with a host teacher at a public school in one of four school boards chosen by the student.
We as teacher candidates are all sympathetic to how challenging the job must be. With over 20 weeks of practicum in five separate placements, there are lots of moving parts to setting up each individual’s practicum. But the practicum office isn’t sympathetic to us. Instead of offering flexibility, or even empathy, they assign teacher candidates in schools far away and then act like it’s our fault when we can’t make it work. When students speak up about their financial pressure, we’re met with blank stares, empty apologies—or worse, outright dismissal. Many of my classmates, and myself, can’t afford to pay for the gas to commute an hour to our placement schools. They don’t care many of us are in severe debt due to the fact the program is costing us thousands of dollars in silent practicum fees, whether that be in paying for rent in multiple cities or on the cost of transportation.
Last fall, I was placed at a school more than an hour away from my given address. My car had just been totalled and I couldn’t afford the $150 in gas a week. I pleaded with the Practicum Office, tearfully asking for some kind of consideration, whether that meant I had to find my own placement, or if I could switch with another education student at a closer school.
I was met with the least empathetic conversation I’ve ever had in my life. As I gave my laundry list of reasons why this placement was financially and mentally impossible for me to do, someone from the office looked me in my eyes and said “That isn’t my problem. I don’t care.”
The sentiment that these people “don’t care” echoed in my head as I left the office utterly destroyed. It echoed on the hour drive to my school every day. It echoed every time I filled up my gas tank, which ended up being three times a week. It echoed in my head when I had to work a 4 to 9 p.m. shift after my unpaid 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. placement at the school.
The same faculty that tells us to feed our students if they come to school hungry, warn us about teacher burnout, and preach best equitable practices in education, “don’t care” about their own students struggling to afford the price of groceries and feeling exhausted by long commutes. Linked in some of my OnQ courses, most importantly, our mandatory Psychology Foundations of Education class, are websites to services like Empower Me, Good2Talk, and mental health helplines for teacher candidates in need. These are resources given to us, which are undoubtedly helpful, but are only band-aid fixes for the larger issues created by the Faculty itself.
These are the questions that me, as well as my fifth year candidates, have been struggling with since our fall practicum placement. I have never heard of positive, considerate, or empathetic interactions with the majority of the Faculty. We aren’t being given the respect we deserve, the respect we have earned, or the respect we’re paying for.
Things need to change. The Faculty needs to change. The Practicum Office needs to change. Drastically. Quickly. Immediately. University employees shouldn’t lack the basic sympathy to even fake a simple “I’m sorry for your situation.”
A complete overhaul sounds big, but it’s necessary. The entire Faculty should engage in mandatory professional development courses in empathy. The University offers courses like “Fostering Inclusivity in Workplaces” and “Cultivating Well Being in Workplaces,” online to do on your own time, to graduate and other students. The goal is to build both empathy and relationships with the people you encounter every day. There should be programs like this for all areas of University staff to ensure students are treated equitably and respectfully.
This isn’t an outrageous request. They’re not suggestions. They need to be requirements.
As education students we’re told to study our own teaching and are part of Professional Learning Cohorts to ensure our practice of teaching is professional and appropriate. This should be adopted by the University staff as well, especially in the Faculty of Education. We, the students, are being directly affected by the lack of empathy demonstrated by the Practicum Office and largely, the Faculty. They’re preaching empathetic actions but practicing the complete opposite. We don’t feel ed, heard, or recognized for our hard work. We feel alone.
I’m pleading, along with the rest of my cohorts, for reform. The Practicum Office in particular needs it drastically.
We need empathy in this profession, it’s what drives our ion for education, and to have it so severely lacking isn’t only upsetting, it’s hypocritical.
Tags
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s) in Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be ed, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to [email protected].
Rose
SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK! IRS ridiculous that I know SO many teachers who are willing to take me and other students on as a TC but they were not ed by the board or university. Yet we aren’t aloud to give the practicum office a recommendation of schools we can go to that will make their life easier, instead they ultimately FORCE us to drive an hour away, totally unethical and inequitable.
This doesn’t even scratch the surface. How about also being put with a horrible and toxic AT and the practicum office indirectly says “push through” and does nothing to stop these teachers. On top of this if it’s too toxic to stay we have to suffer through another month of placement and delay graduation despite it being the practicum offices fault. These ATs should never be aloud to be a host teacher again. The office and faculty of education should ask US to review our host teacher as well and ensure these are healthy environments where students can grow, learn, and feel safe.
Do better Queens.
serena wong
so so well said 👏🏼
education students deserve better.
Nina
I’m so grateful that someone finally called out the Practicum Office for their lack of empathy. Their blatant disregard for our emotions, personal experiences, and accommodations has sadly become something that many students in the Faculty of Education have come to accept. However, this article accurately identifies the core issue: this lack of empathy is NOT normal, and the challenge of securing placements is NO excuse for treating us like mere numbers on a spreadsheet. Often, we don’t even learn about our placements until just a couple of days before we’re supposed to be in the classroom. During my third year, I selected two boards in Toronto and two in Kingston as my preferred placement options. Yet, the week before I was set to start, I still hadn’t been told where I’d be placed. I was panicking, not knowing if I’d even need to travel at all because I could have stayed in Kingston. However, if I was placed in Toronto, I would have to scramble to make travel arrangements, pack, get groceries, and basically get everything organized in just a couple of days. I emailed the Practicum Office, simply asking for a general idea of where I might be placed. I received an automated reply about how busy they were at that time of year, but there was no follow-up. THEN, the Friday before my placement started, they finally told me I’d been placed in Toronto, leaving me to scramble to get everything together in time for a Monday start.
Another major issue is the lack of planning time: we don’t even know the grades we’ll be teaching until the placements are rolled out. If we had that information earlier, we could properly prepare, plan lessons, and adjust to the specific needs of the students in those grades. Instead, we’re left scrambling at the last minute, which only adds to the stress.
I have countless other examples from my own experience, as well as from my peers, that highlight the lack of care, understanding, and empathy shown by the Practicum Office. I wholeheartedly agree with the call to action at the end of the article. Reform is absolutely necessary. This treatment is NOT acceptable. We’ve been enduring it for the past five years, but it’s time for it to be addressed and fixed.