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Designing sustainable systems for high-quality instruction, from preparation to practice
Cece Zhou
Category: High-Quality Instructional Materials
During a grammar practice activity, a group of second-grade students were puzzled by the accuracy of their work. “We got six mistakes!” said one student. “How did we get six?”
While their teacher, Casey Green, was ready to help, she saw this as a real-time opportunity for her student teacher, Nicole Butler, to step in.
Butler scanned the sentences and immediately saw the issue: the misplacement of quotation marks, a concept the students had been introduced to weeks earlier. Calmly and confidently, she guided them back through the purpose of quotation marks, when they’re used, and how they applied to the sentences in front of them. As the students corrected their work, confusion gave way to clarity.
“When I did my process of internalizing the lesson last night, I noticed the quotation marks and I knew that some students might need more help with that,” Butler reflected.
Despite still being a teacher-in-training, Butler’s ability to anticipate student misunderstandings reflects a level of readiness often associated with more experienced teachers. Her preparation wasn’t by chance. At Carson-Newman University, Butler had learned to “internalize” lessons: working through them as a student would, identifying where they might struggle, and planning targeted responses ahead of time.
Lesson internalization is an essential component of Carson-Newman’s coursework on high-quality instructional materials (HQIM), standards-aligned curricula that provide vetted, grade-level content for teachers to implement effectively. Instead of having candidates practice creating lessons from scratch, which can make it difficult for novice teachers to ensure coherence, alignment, and grade-level rigor, they’ve shifted their approach in recent years to support candidates to assess the quality of district-provided materials, anticipate student challenges, and deliver rigorous instruction that meets the needs of every student.
“We made sure we were covering all of our standards,” said Susan Price, director of field experiences and assistant professor at Carson-Newman. “We covered everything about the science of reading and all instructional areas so that our students would be able to go into a classroom and be ready to help with whatever classroom they went into.”
That shift is a response to Tennessee’s broader instructional reforms catalyzed by the Literacy Success Act of 2021. As district partners embrace HQIM, Carson-Newman is committed to ensuring their candidates are prepared to enter classrooms already equipped with the knowledge and skills to use those materials effectively.
Green affirms that this increased instructional alignment between the EPP and its district partners is valuable: “With Carson-Newman using our curriculum and HQIM, that’s going to help a teacher succeed in their first year. The curriculum is a big aspect in classroom management,” an area that new teachers often cite as one of the biggest challenges in their first years on the job.
Watch: How CNU remapped their courses to prepare stronger literacy teachers.
Carson-Newman’s efforts are paying off. External reviews of its educator-preparation program (EPP) have improved significantly over the past two years, reflecting the intentional work faculty have invested to align preparation with the realities of classrooms. However, that progress has not been easy. While state policy change and funding have provided some resources, the intensive, complex, and time-consuming work of redesigning courses and clinical experiences requires a significant amount of work that is difficult to achieve without adequately investing in implementation, which is why having partners like DFI in the work is critical—something we heard from several of the folks at CNU.
Watch: Dr. Tommy Arnold, Director of Schools, shares how the district has embedded HQIM and how they partner with CNU.
Advocating for a system that better supports future teachers
Too often, PK-12 systems and educator preparation are treated as separate entities. Across Tennessee, EPPs are being asked to ready future teachers for rapidly evolving classrooms, often without the funding, access, or implementation support that’s provided to their PK-12 counterparts. But the reality of effective teaching and learning, as seen with Green and Butler in the classroom, in the collaboration between Jefferson County Schools and Carson-Newman, and in the lived experience of EPP and PK-12 leaders themselves, requires a more integrated approach.
“We're being scrappy and innovative because we're working to get those with the limited funds that we have,” said Kim Hawkins, dean of the College of Education at Carson-Newman. “But these workarounds are not sustainable long-term.”
Fortunately, Hawkins has gained agency through the Tennessee Ed Prep Impact Coalition, a group of EPP leaders from different institutional and geographic contexts across the state. These leaders, whose programs prepare nearly 50% of Tennessee’s future teachers, come together regularly to speak up on how to improve policy to better support teacher preparation and, as a result, strengthen statewide educator workforce efforts.
“One of the most recent things we've been discussing in our coalition, is that we could ask our state to make a policy that whatever is adopted, those publishers would need to give access to ed prep,” said Hawkins. “That would be huge.”
HQIM policy isn’t the only priority coalition members have discussed. They’ve emphasized mentorship and induction for new and aspiring teachers, and have formally proposed policy recommendations to state leaders to bolster the delivery of high-quality math instruction.
"We have developed these professional relationships that have also become personal friendships, and we help each other no matter what the policy is that's coming down the pike."
- Kim Hawkins, Dean of the College of Education at Carson-Newman
Hawkins shared: “We’ve been able to organize ourselves to communicate with legislators, the state board, and the Tennessee Department of Ed to formulate a united opinion around policy and help folks understand what it looks like on our side and how we work together to make the next generation of teachers so that our students can have a well-prepared teacher on the first day of class.”
That collaboration has also fostered a strong professional network among leaders who might otherwise be seen as competitors. From a personal standpoint, Hawkins reflected: “I feel that I have a full support network across the state. We talk to each other on an ongoing basis. We have developed these professional relationships that have also become personal friendships, and we help each other no matter what the policy is that's coming down the pike.”
Watch: Kim Hawkins shares about the work and impact of the TN Ed Prep Impact Coalition
As Tennessee continues to raise the bar for instruction, its policies must reflect adequate support for novice and early-career teachers. Programs like Carson-Newman are already doing the work because they are committed to the long-term impact of stronger beginning teachers. More nuanced implementation support, and deeper engagement with EPP leaders and their PK-12 partners, ensures they do it as part of a unified, sustainable system that supports all teachers and students to be successful.
Watch: Hear Tommy Arnold speak about the importance of EPP-district partnerships.
