The CalStateTEACH head office is located inside the CSU chancellor’s office in Long Beach, CA. This is where admissions and student services are administered. A student help desk service is located on the San Marcos campus. There are five regional centers at CSU campuses that geographically cross over the state, from Fullerton, Los Angeles and Pomona in the south to Fresno and Hayward in the north. Each regional center has a director with assistants.

The faculty in this program work out of their homes and coordinate with the regional centers that are located closest to them. Program directors and other key administrators communicate regularly by email and through a listserv. They also hold intermittent face-to-face meetings that alternate from south to north, as well as weekly conference calls. CalStateTEACH faculty meet twice each year for professional development training.

The students in this program are referred to as "interns," primarily because they are working on the job while going through the curriculum. The program’s foundation, according to its website, is "self-study with online materials, print resources, CD-ROM materials, web-based class discussions and on-site coaching."

The interns utilize extensive online "study guides" for all course work. "The study guide provides the structure and sequence to keep the interns on track," says Helene Mandel, CalStateTEACH system-wide co-director. "It moves them through their readings, and there are discussions they put online. There are classroom-based applications and other activities that they do to meet the outcomes of the program."

Mandel adds that when interns first enter the program they get an "entire professional library" of textbooks, videos and CD-ROMs that are used throughout the 18 months.

Interns are also assigned a Learning Support Faculty (LSF) who is a faculty member from a nearby CSU campus. The LSF is responsible for a small cohort of interns and observes interns teaching at least once each month in addition to providing one-on-one assessment and guidance throughout the 18 months. Interns are also assigned an Adjunct Site Faculty (ASF), who is an experienced teacher at their school who acts as a mentor and also observes the interns in the classroom.

Instead of semesters or quarters, the program is divided into four primary stages: Focus on Teachers and Learners, Key Aspects of Teaching, Subject Matter Applications, and Wider Professional Issues. Interns also attend five classroom-based Saturday seminars during the program. Another key element are "Summative Assessments," whereby throughout the program interns are building an extensive professional portfolio.

"Probably the most unique thing about the curriculum is the fact that it is an integrated curriculum versus course after course in traditional teacher preparation programs," says Mandel. By integrated, Mandel means that interns often use what they learn immediately inside their classrooms.

"In the main, the work they are doing has direct application in the classroom; they learn something during the evening and the next day may try it in class," says Mandel. "There is some direct opporutnity and application enmeshed in blending theory and practice."

Instead of tests and quizzes, at the end of each stage, interns build their portfolios, which consist of lessons plans, classroom management plans, their student’s work, written assessments provided by mentors, threaded discussions that were posted during some of the numerous activities they are assigned throughout the program, their various written assignments, and more. "The portfolio is evidence that proves and shows that they are making progress toward becoming professionally competent," says Mandel, adding that the entire curriculum and portfolio work is organized around state of California standards for the teaching profession.

One helpful electronic tool that is being utilized by interns is an electronic lesson-plan-assistant software product called TaskStream, which has been incorporated into the Blackboard course management system being utilized by the program.

The software prompts its users on how to write various lesson plan sections. The prompts are electronically tied into state academic content standards, which some schools are requiring teachers to include in their lesson plans. Mandel says that use of the software and prompts has enabled interns to write "dramatically improved" lessons plans.

Interns must devote approximately 12 to 14 hours each week to their studies outside of their teaching responsibilities, and CalStateTEACH stresses that this type of self-guided learning requires more self-discipline than if they were in a traditional classroom learning environment.

"It’s a unique program and it fits the needs of a lot of teachers for whom it would be really difficult to get a traditional credential because of their personal time and where they are located geographically," says Ellen Baker Derwin, director of marketing. "It’s very typical that we get career changers or people who are not right out of college,"