Supporting Urban-Oriented Teacher Candidates to Experience Rural Schooling: The Story of a Virtual Adapted Practicum

Abstract

In the fall of 2020, due to the institutional impacts of COVID-19, the Master of Teaching Program in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto (Canada) transitioned to a modified practicum program. In this article, I draw on self-study (Kitchen et al., 2020) to examine and share my experiences as a Practicum Advisor tasked to design and deliver a four-week virtual practicum program for 30 teacher candidates, without access to high school classrooms. I reflect on how my rural teacher and researcher selves informed my practicum design in one of Canada’s largest urban faculties of education, including teacher candidates’ development of data portraits based on one rural case study high school. A virtual adapted practicum presented me with a narrow opening, in an otherwise urban-dominant curriculum, to expand teacher candidates’ gaze beyond the metropolis.