Lessons · Teaching · clinical teaching against a paid internship

Clinical teaching or a paid internship: the fork that decides your year

An approved Texas programme puts a candidate into a classroom in one of two ways: clinical teaching, unpaid, working beside a cooperating teacher who holds the class; or an internship, paid, as the teacher of record with your own class and your own roster.

Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.

What it is for

The career-changer at thirty-eight comes back here. Clinical teaching is an apprenticeship with somebody experienced in the room, and it costs her a year of salary. The internship pays her a first-year teacher's wage and gives her thirty children in August with a programme running alongside in the evenings. Both produce the same certificate. Only one of them she can afford, and only one she may be ready for.

How to think about it

Weigh two things honestly against each other. First, money: can you go a year without a salary. Second, support: an intern is a real teacher from the first day, evaluated as one, and the safety net is a mentor and a field supervisor rather than somebody standing in the room with you. Write both answers down before you pick a route.

Worked example

Clinical teaching: somebody else holds the class, you teach beside them, unpaid

One term in most programmes, and the classroom stays somebody else's responsibility.

Internship: you are the teacher of record, on a district contract, paid

A full school year, your roster, your grade book, your parents' evening.

Both routes are supervised by a field supervisor from the programme

The observation requirement does not care which one you took.

Same standard certificate at the end of either

The fork is about the year, not about the outcome.

Your turn

Name the classroom teacher who hosts an unpaid clinical placement.

Clinical teaching: the  teacher holds the class while you teach beside them

The trap

Choosing the internship purely for the salary without checking that you can be hired. An internship exists only if a district offers you a job, so that route depends on a hiring market you do not control, and a candidate who plans on it alone can reach August with no placement at all.

Practise clinical teaching against a paid internship on HoneA question on it now, a real problem where there is one, and it is remembered for review. Free, no email needed.