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Although the two interns in District D still functioned as student teachers,
the intent was eventually to have the part-time mentors no longer working with
the interns after the semester. Although this differed from Dr. Bullard’s model, it
did appear to work because of the difference in how the district hired the intern.
Whereas Dr. Bullard’s model required interns to work one full year with a part-time
mentor, District D’s model paid the interns for their final semester of undergraduate
education with a mentor for the entire day. This model would still align with Dr.
Bullard’s if one considered the time spent for 50% of the year during one semester.
However, one question arose from this model: What supports would the intern
working for their final semester of undergraduate education with a full-time mentor
receive during their first semester of full-time employment as a first-year teacher? In
Dr. Bullard’s model, interns received a full year of pre-induction support, whereas
interns in District D only received one semester of support.

Factor 3: School Climate and Culture
School climate is defined as the “perceptions of emotional and physical safety,
support, inclusiveness, respect, challenge, and engagement” (Devaney & Berg,
2016, p. 1), whereas school culture is the “unwritten rules and traditions, customs,
and expectations” (Deal & Peterson, 2016, p. 7). Evidence from this study illustrated
the importance of school culture in the model, found through descriptions of
communication for the mission and vision, trust, respect, and collegiality.
Researchers have shown school culture helps schools move students to higher
learning by being allowing educators to be innovative in their thinking and delivery
of instruction (Center on Great Teachers and Leaders, 2019; Deal & Peterson, 2016).
Dr. Bullard communicated his vision with district principals and reminded them of
the opportunity to brand themselves positively to ensure they had a pipeline to the
university systems to recruit interns. Dr. Bullard wanted “high quality candidates”
for his P–12 students. Dr. Bullard’s intern as teacher model also allowed school
districts to build capacity by preparing their teachers (Muhammad, 2018). Although
interns in this study were still undergraduate candidates, Dr. Bullard communicated
with university partners how they would still receive the support they needed while
finishing their degrees and helping to solve a teacher shortage problem.
Research by the Center on School Turnaround (2017) included consideration of
key components of school culture, including trust and respect. Mrs. Taylor described
an example illustrating trust and respect in the process:
You have to understand that these students are not certified teachers. They
have not student taught; they are a year ahead. But not with as much
experience so you can’t sit there and drill them, you know, it’s just different.
Like, they’re still learning things and we kind of ran into that last year where
they were expecting them to be like all the other teachers and have known all
this stuff. And we’re like, no, no, no, they’re still learning as they go, you got
to give them some grace.
Mrs. Taylor understood her interns had little experience, and she could not expect
them to know the same things as experienced teachers. By going to administrators
and telling them, “[Sarah’s] an intern, but it’s different than your traditional student
teaching, like y’all are training her to be hired as soon as she graduates,” Mrs.
Cross reminded them of the roles and expectations of the program. These examples
demonstrated mentors were willing to trust the process of preparing the candidates

16 The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin: International Journal for Professional Educators