PAWS- Professional Advancement and Wellness Support: A Multi-Tiered System of Support for Teacher Candidates

Track: Educational and Faculty Development Developing resilience and self-efficacy can help buffer the stress of the teaching profession and decrease perceptions of exhaustion in teachers and Teacher Candidates (TC’s) (Fu & Zhang, 2024). Despite this, most educator preparation programs (EPPs) do not embed resilience and self-efficacy training and support throughout coursework and clinical experiences, opting instead for standalone experiences that are insufficient to build TCs’ resilience and self-efficacy (Ansley & Wander, 2021, Gist, 2022). In this presentation, we will share an innovative system to support teacher candidates in the NCSU College of Education entitled Professional Advancement and Wellness Support (PAWS). PAWS provides multi-layered support to promote the well-being of every TC in the College of Education. We will share the process of innovation, initial implementation, and preliminary evaluation.