Baylor University student Stephanie Dornfeld will graduate next year.
Her goal is to become a teacher, but she's getting a head start on her career through the Professional Development School program.
"Having first hand experience with doing these kinds of things-- nothing can prepare you better and I feel like when I'm done with this I'm really prepared to have my own classroom," says Dornfeld.
Through the PDS program, Baylor students are actually working as interns in Waco ISD classrooms for the entire course of a school year-- instead of spending a single semester student teaching.
"It's wonderful for me. It's wonderful for the kids and especially wonderful for the Baylor interns. They get to see what the first day of school is really like-- nothing really prepares you like experiencing it first hand," says first grade teacher Kathleen Bradley.
The PDS program is designed to better prepare teachers and to better teach the pre-kindergarten through 12th grade students in the schools in which the education students train.
"It's a partnership between universities and a school to work together to meet the needs of both," says Baylor University Education professor Thomas Proctor.
The PDS concept started at the Hillcrest Professional Development school in Waco and now the partnership between Baylor and Waco ISD has expanded to nine more schools.
"The whole process started there and it was going so well... we expanded to the other elementary and even middle and high schools at Waco ISD. It's a wonderful system," says South Waco Elementary Teacher Pam Fischer.
During a phone conference on Wednesday, with PDS schools in Denver and Jacksonville, representatives here-- reported that in five years of the program at the Hillcrest Professional Development School.. The pass rate for state exams improved from 33 to 98 percent.
And with figures like that, principals involved with the program are not only looking forward to improved achievement in their own schools, but also to hiring the interns as teachers one day.
"We hope that the intern experience in which they have their senior year in college will actually give them a full year of teaching experience. So, all the normal challenges that come with the first year of teaching will actually happen during their intern year," says Cesar Chavez Principal Alfredo Loredo.
More than one hundred Baylor students are serving as full time interns this school year and an additional two hundred will be spending a couple of days a week at the ten PDS campuses in Waco.