Giving Compass' Take:

• Susanne Nobles explains how learning from multiple people is more beneficial for students than education from a single teacher. 

• How can funders work to build additional education support for students? Where is this additional support needed most? 

• Learn how sharing work can build students' network. 

In my own research, I found that students who work with preservice teachers in virtual field experiences learned more than they did working with just me, their classroom teacher. Even as a teacher with 20 years of experience, I could not provide my students the range of support as readers, writers, and thinkers that they got having an online preservice teacher to work with beyond their regular class time. One of my students said it best, “More than one person’s opinion helped me see what people understood and what they did and did not like. It is like when you take a survey and the more people who are asked the more correct the survey is. So the more ideas and opinions I get help my poetry get better.”

The impact goes even deeper. Preservice teachers who do at least some of their training in high poverty schools have been shown to be more effective when they work in similar schools. Virtual field experiences can provide opportunities for more preservice teachers to train in an incredible diversity of classrooms, in turn creating more teachers who have the skills to support learners in the highest need schools.

Read the full article about support for students by Susanne Nobles at Christensen Institute.