SAN MARCOS ---- Parents of Valley Elementary School students watched intently as experiments were performed to explain science concepts such as current electricity, air pressure, and the nature of liquids and solids.

Sitting at several tables that lined the Poway school's auditorium last week, the parents were participating in an event planned and conducted by students of the Cal State San Marcos College of Education. The students are earning their teaching credentials at the elementary school as part of a cohort ---- a group of students learning together.

The cohort is part of a year-long program to teach a group of 25 college students how to become educators, while allowing them to directly apply their lessons to the children on the premises.

Created to help parents learn simple ways to teach science at home to their children, the event also gave the college students an opportunity to plan out and teach a lesson while working with the community. These are all important skills for a teacher to have, said Gilbert Valadez, a professor at the College of Education who teaches at the cohort.

The project also accounted for 20 percent of the students' final grade, Valadez said.

"This way I am forcing them to work with the community in a positive way," Valadez said. "I think it's a very powerful learning experience for them."

Meeting at the school every day for eight weeks per semester during the two-semester program, the students split up their week with tutoring children on Mondays and Wednesdays, and spending Fridays observing professional teachers work with their classes.

"You have such a better learning experience when you get to practice it instead of just learning it," said student Gretchen Pawlak, 22. "You have to adapt to each student you teach."

The Cal State students are also currently taking four classes at the elementary school that focus on social studies, literacy, science and teaching methods.

"We get a well-rounded view of every subject we are going to teach," said student Samantha Stuart, 23.

Because Valley Elementary is a bilingual dual emersion school ---- meaning that both English and Spanish speakers are placed in the same classrooms ---- Valadez, who teaches "Elementary Teaching and Learning," said he tries to help the students learn teaching strategies that focus on English language support for Spanish-speaking children.

"(We) feel there is a very strong need for English language support in our state," Valadez said. "Bilingual education is pretty much gone."

Valadez said that it is important to educate new teachers with strategies they can use to teach non-English speakers so that every child can learn.

After their eight weeks are completed at the cohort, the Cal State students are farmed out to elementary schools throughout San Diego County where they will serve as student teachers for the remainder of the semester, Pawlak said. Ý

Although she will be leaving the friends she made at the cohort, Pawlak said she is looking forward to practicing everything she has learned at Valley Elementary.

"It's exciting because I'm going to be student teaching full time," Pawlak said. "(I'm) actually going to be teaching and not preparing for it."