Teacher candidates often enter the classroom with little preparation about how to collaborate with paraeducators, yet these individuals have important roles in instruction and classroom support. This proposed presentation seeks to evoke dialogue among participants about the challenges, intergenerational issues, and recommended strategies to address this important problem of practice.
How can a rural educator preparation program sustain reciprocal K-12 partnerships when mentor teacher shortages make traditional student teaching placements in local school districts scarce? This roundtable presents one college's response: a course-embedded clinical model organized around preparation, site visits, and guided reflections. Grounded in reciprocity and third space theory, the model creates repeated, intentional points of contact among candidates, faculty, teachers, and principals, even (or despite) when full student teaching placements are unavailable locally. Emerging findings suggest this flexible approach sustains relationships, supports rural schools facing staffing constraints, and functions as an early workforce-development strategy. Attendees will leave with a practical model adaptable to placement-limited contexts and will be invited to share their own partnership strategies from rural and other settings.
