Teacher preparation

Teacher preparation, as part of the undergraduate curriculum, was initiated in 1965, when President Goheen appointed a faculty committee to develop a program appropriate to a liberal arts college. The members were Professors William M. Beaney, chairman, Jeremiah S. Finch, Heinrich D. Holland, Sheldon Judson, Andr� Maman, Albert H. Marckwardt, James W. Smith, and Albert W. Tucker. The committee's recommendations were based on the belief that a broad undergraduate program with concentration in one subject, combined with adequate experience as a student teacher under competent supervision, would prepare a person to teach that subject at the secondary school level.

The Teacher Preparation Program was approved by the faculty in 1967 and begun in that year under the direction of Henry Callard, former headmaster of the Gilman School, who had guided the proposal through its presentation to the faculty. He was joined in 1968 by Henry Drewry, former chairman of social studies at the Princeton High School, who became director following Callard's retirement. In 1969 the program was approved by the New Jersey Department of Education, and the first graduating senior received a permanent certificate for secondary school teaching.

For many years students had gone out from Princeton to enter the teaching profession, most of them in independent schools; lack of certification was an impediment for those who wished to become public school teachers. The advent of the program made certification possible on graduation, thus extending the possibilities for service to public as well as to private schools. As the program has evolved, it has adhered to the basic ideas of the original proposal: completion of full departmental requirements, selection of elective courses important to prospective teachers, and extended classroom experience of directed observation and teaching with competent counsel and instruction. Certification is possible in English, foreign languages, mathematics, science, and social studies. By 1976 nearly 300 had completed the program and received certification, more than half of whom had gone directly into teaching.

Besides achieving the purpose for which it was founded, the program has provided an added benefit for its participants. Orderly consideration of the teaching process and of the organization of ideas and materials to assist others to learn can enhance one's ability to view and evaluate one's own education. Thus the Teacher Preparation Program is not only consonant with a liberal education but supports and strengthens it for a significant part of each undergraduate class.

Henry N. Drewry
Jeremiah S. Finch

From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University Press (1978).