The Muse

MUN and NLSchools should consider better solutions to meaningfully engage student-interns to address yearly teacher shortages.

Labelled as both exploitative and unethical, unpaid internships are prohibited in many professional sectors in Canada, they continue to haunt students in social work, nursing, and teacher programs among others.

While bursaries have been introduced in nursing, teaching programs across the country have done little to alleviate the financial burden of full-time unpaid internships.

Unfortunately, these internships are deemed perfectly legitimate according to many regulatory standards and are only meekly questioned by those whom it directly affects.

Student interns still pay full tuition

For those eager to become teachers, the B.Ed. (I/S) program effectively forces students into a year of unemployment, while still needing to pay full tuition and cost of living. Even for those fortunate enough to have the resources to pass through the program financially unscathed, it can still be a source of stress.

The price of entry to the BEd program dissuades potential applicants from disadvantaged or marginalized socioeconomic backgrounds– candidates who may have a much higher potential to engage a large number of NL youth.

On top of the unpaid internship, it is unclear how MUN justifies charging a full semester of tuition to students who will not step foot in their halls during those four months.

There’s a triteness to the question of “should interns be paid.” People should be compensated for their work, duh! Yet, I don’t think there’s a strong enough argument to compel MUN and NLSchools to compensate mentors for the mentorship in its current format.

Teacher-interns only provide a brief potential surplus of capacity to schools – potential surplus because they cannot teach without the presence of their mentor teacher in the room.

At best, under the current structure, the mentorship program creates an idle body in the classroom, be it the mentor teacher or the intern. Rather, I contend that the issue of unpaid internships is a red herring to one of the chief problems that hamstrings Canada’s entire education system – a dire lack of teachers and paraeducators.

Let’s instead consider MUN and NLSchools’ collective decision-making and actions made towards increasing teacher numbers across Newfoundland and Labrador. As mentioned, this is an issue of public policy. 

The province needs to examine its economic logic to address an inefficient allocation of scarce resources. How can it, in conjunction with MUN, leverage the local B.Ed.(I/S) program to fill teacher shortages while maintaining the viability of the program?

Let’s look at current efforts. Presumably as a two-pronged solution to the teacher shortage and the appeasement of financially vulnerable B.Ed. (I/S) students – MUN and NLSchools have agreed to let teacher-interns at the junior high and secondary level substitute teach for a paltry 10 days of their 60-day internship at their placement school.

This new policy is a respectable move but it fails both objectives. Under the current supply hiring hierarchy, interns have a very low chance of receiving a supply call. Moreover, school administrators have differing attitudes towards the revised internship policy which only makes this approach unfair to interns placed at different schools across the country and abroad.

Interns are left unpaid and supply vacancies are left unfilled. Granted, in the third semester of their program students are able to supply teach between April and June, but only if they’re able to tailor a course schedule sparse enough to permit it.

Apprenticeship model

The throughline here is that the B.Ed (I/S) program is a missed opportunity. So, how can we extract a greater social net benefit from the B.Ed. (I/S) program? What if we re-imagined the program as a whole? After all, managing a classroom has little to do with the knowledge of a subject a teacher possesses nor their awareness of the latest pedagogical philosophies that buzz around the G.A. Hickman building.

Many seasoned teachers will tell you that teaching is in fact a skilled trade, and perhaps it’s to the apprenticeship model we should look for insight. Let us consider the carpenter. An apprentice spends roughly 80% of their education in the field, 20% in classroom. 

Building companies and contractors get committed and valuable labourers – and the apprentices acquire and hone the skills required for the job. The skillset of the apprentice is meaningfully engaged and their coursework is brief, but targeted.

Currently, I don’t see the skillsets and talent of student-teachers being harnessed in such a way. In a sad irony, we are rendered impotent and, in some cases, impoverished by our own education to become educators. MUN’s education department remains afloat despite their disgruntled students, and NL government flounders in a teacher crisis.

Can’t we make the profession just a bit more enticing? And through all of this, as most education policy issues go, we are forgetting the children who desperately just need more teachers.