C3 - Cross-Cohort Community

In my role as Undergraduate Advisor for the Department of Special Education, I oversee the five-semester Professional Development Sequence (PDS) for pre-service teachers majoring in special education. Students apply for this program in the fall of their sophomore year to begin in the spring with at least two courses taken as a cohort. Starting in the fall of their junior year, students take all their courses together as a cohort for their final four semesters. The cohorts create long-lasting professional and personal networks and –in my opinion –lead to stronger special education teachers. We currently do not have any way to form across-cohort networks, which limits the impact of the existing networks. I would like to create a formal structure where students across cohorts are able to learn together informally. By extending these professional and personal networks across the major, I hope that we will grow our students’ future professional and personal networks (and hopefully help them stay in the classroom longer). This formal structure will also enable us to do professional development throughout the Special Education major, in a way that we have not been able to do thus far.