Standard 6. The unit must have at least one designated school partnership with a school or district that works collaboratively to align theory and practice and that meets the standards in this subpart. The unit may have additional partnerships with districts or schools to place candidates in clinical experiences according to the standards in subpart 3.

UED and Hopkins Public Schools have been collaborating for several years to diversify the teaching workforce in Hopkins through the implementation of a student teaching intern program. Hopkins schools provide training sites where UED students learn and develop skills and qualifications needed to achieve the student teaching goals and satisfy program requirements. Student teachers of color are hired as interns with extended placements after student teaching. Building on this early collaborative effort, in early 2022, UED and Hopkins began discussions to establish an expanded, “designated” school partnership to meet the new unit standards within Subp.2. The mission of our reciprocal partnership is to raise student achievement, professional preparation of teacher candidates, faculty development, and inquiry directed at the improvement of practice and enhanced student learning. Besides this, we aspire to collaboratively align theory and practice centered on culturally responsive pedagogy, closing education equity gaps, and diversifying the teaching staff to meet future employment needs of the Hopkins area. In spring of 2022, our partnership focused on developing a pathway for early childhood staff in Hopkins to earn their Early Childhood Education Birth-Grade 3 license or PreK endorsement.

One of the main reasons we asked Hopkins to be our designated school partner is that our missions were already closely aligned, and we could leverage and build upon our years-old partnership with the student teaching intern program. Our goal is for both Metro State teacher candidates as well as Hopkins’ teaching staff to be empowered to improve student learning and achieve more equitable outcomes because of this partnership. One long-standing example of aligning theory and practice is in the fact that the Coordinator of Equity and Inclusion in Hopkins Public Schools is a community faculty member teaching each semester in our Elementary Education program. We began intentional work to deepen aligning theory and practice during the 2022-23 school year. The Hopkins School District provides sites for state-of-the-art practice, organized to foster training for new professionals, extend the professional development of veteran teachers, and sponsor collaborative research and inquiry.

Other Partnerships Beyond Those for Field Placements

Since 2018, UED has partnered with several high schools that offer our EDU 200 Introduction to Urban Education and Reflective Teaching course as a concurrent enrollment college-in-the-schools opportunity for their students which are examples of aligning theory and practice. High school teachers teach these concurrent enrollment courses to high school students in the high school setting using the curriculum of EDU 200 and EDU 203 Multicultural Education, and each offering has a UED faculty assigned to serve as liaison and mentor about the college-level course. These concurrent enrollment partner schools include ElColegio High School (Minneapolis, 2018), South St. Paul High School (2020-23, and St. Louis Park High School (2021-23), and Burnsville High School (2022-23).

Furthermore, since 2021, UED has also established Grow Your Own (GYO) program partnerships with several districts including St. Paul Public Schools, Eden Prairie Schools, and Burnsville-Eagan-Savage ISD 191 which received GYO grants from the MN Department of Education to partner with Metro State UED. Other districts (e.g. Osseo and Rosemount-Eagan-Apple Valley) applied for GYO grants to work with Metro State but did not receive funding. In 2021-22, UED also began establishing a partnership with Intermediate District 917 to focus on preparing diverse and culturally competent Special Education teachers. In spring 2022, this partnership in collaboration with the MN Humanities Center resulted in receiving a Teacher Mentorship and Retention grant from PELSB to provide professional development with graduate course credit and affinity space to early career BIPOC teachers during the 2022-23 school year.