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Dan, my personal history is a little different. I was certified as an elementary teacher in Washington State back in the mid-90s through a post BA program at the University of Washington in Seattle that doesn't exist anymore. It had the advantage of requiring a little over a year of coursework and of integrating time in the field throughout, leading up to full time student teaching in the spring, but all in the same school. This meant I had a full academic year in the same classroom, which in my case was a multiage, team-taught 3-4-5th grade class of about 60 students. Now I am a teacher educator and supervise student teachers who have to get up to speed in 14 weeks of student teaching. What precedes that are mostly observations scattered in fieldwork requirements across courses. What's worse, they have to switch classrooms halfway through to gain experience in different grade levels and in settings with students who have disabilities if they add that certification. I can only imagine how unprepared those who get a few weeks of training in the summer must feel when they face classrooms of their own. One interesting idea that has not been adopted is to split up the teacher preparation programs so that first the courses necessary for certification are completed, and then those that pertain to the masters degree can be completed once the teacher candidates begin teaching full time. This would give some the option of teaching for a year or two before returning for the advanced coursework. I'd like to see some more experimentation with models that don't just make students plow straight through but provide opportunities for more in-depth experiences with P-12 students in schools.