Mariposa Elementary School

Mariposa Elementary School is a fully included school.  It serves K-6 students in an urban location in Orange County.  Twenty-seven teachers provide effective instruction to approximately 600 students.  The community surrounding Mariposa is rich with cultural diversity with over 60 dialects and languages spoken.  All neighborhood students with disabilities attend this site.  Every Special Day Class (SDC) and Resource Specialist (RSP) students are assigned to a general education classroom. A collaboration/co-teaching team model including both general education and special education exists in many classrooms.  The Learning Center provides a place for children who need additional support to work in small groups or receive tutoring.  The Computer Lab is open daily to classes and individual instructional groups.  Two sets of upper grade teachers co-teach for the entire day using an open classroom model (all 60 students in one large classroom).

Students at California State University, Fullerton training to be special educators students teach first semester in general education and second semester in special education.  They are able to witness first hand the collaboration/co-teaching model. All teachers practice research based strategies and are open to sharing their knowledge base with the student s at CSU Fullerton.  During the past two years over 100 students from CSU Fullerton have benefited from this partnership.  The school provides wonderful observation opportunities, fieldwork practicum, student teaching and intern/emergency teacher demonstration lessons.  Meeting at an elementary school provides hands-on examples, demonstration lessons, and access to a variety of curriculum materials and each semester at least one university course is taught at Mariposa.  Teachers from our site often participate in these classes.  University faculty members volunteer their time to observe students, support teachers in classrooms, model lessons, cover classes during demonstration debriefings and present at staff in service days.  The principal works in collaboration with the university faculty to establish an observation schedule.  A key criteria in building this relationship has been Mariposa's willingness to be apart of the teaching team. University candidates observe stellar teaching and witness model lessons.  These demonstration lessons are taught by site teachers with particular expertise or interest in an area.

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