The Regents Task force on Teaching report, "Teaching to higher Standards: New York's Commitment," states that all pre-service teacher candidates enrolled in a certification program are to have early and continuous field experiences in the schools. The mission statement of SUNY Potsdam's Department of Teacher Education requires a field experience component for GRED 572/595 that will provide prospective English teachers with authentic experiences in the public schools. The department strives to assist teachers to become reflective practitioners, life-long learners, and persons able to integrate their knowledge of subject matter, pedagogy, students, the school and the larger community. The experience will be progressive: observing the classroom teacher in action; participating in daily classroom activities; conferencing individual students; and teaching a large group from prepared, mutually agreed upon lesson plans. The student will keep reflective journals what will be part of the student portfolio (Baines and Seramur).
 

Massena and SUNY Potsdam successfully designed a Professional Development School model for the training of pre-service teachers, for the professional development of its own staff, and as a vehicle for raising student achievement. While the ultimate goal of the PDS is to involve Massena's entire secondary school, as well as many departments at SUNY Potsdam, the PDS was launched with MST secondary English graduate students who took two classes a day, twice a week, at Massena High School; they also observed and assisted in the classes of five high school teachers for the first six weeks of the school year. The graduate students then moved from observing to designing lessons and teaching under the tutelage of their mentor teachers who also participated in weekly seminars with the MST students. One of the two courses for the MST students was a methods course taught by a Massena high school English teacher Lee Baines who coordinated the PDS program with SUNY professor Linda Seramur; Dr. Seramur participated with her students in the methods course. The course titles were GRED 572, Strategies For Teaching Secondary English Internship, and GRED 595 Teaching Literacy in Secondary Schools Massena. Dr Seramur taught the course in literacy. Topics covered were writing and conferencing, classroom management test correction and evaluation. Lesson planning, error analysis, job shadowing, elements of curriculum, teaching different needs students, organizing the classroom, professionalism and technology was chosen by SUNY Potsdam because of its renowned Tech Prep collaboration with major business and industry. Massena has invested heavily in technology and technology training and in professional development for standards focused teaching strategies. Coordinator Baines is the architect of Massena's Tech Prep program. Through the PDS Mr. Baines has connected teachers and teaching candidates to the technology currently being used by the industrial partners of the Massena Tech Prep consortium. Following a job shadowing experience, teachers and pre-service

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