Sometimes, hands-on work outside of the classroom means preparing to go back into one. Peabody College of education and human development has long had a partnership with the Murrell School, an East Nashville school for students with extreme emotional and learning disabilities.

"Most of the kids there have experienced pretty significant life trauma," says Andrea Capizzi, associate professor of the practice and director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Special Education, who did her own student teaching at the school more than 30 years ago.

Susan Siegel, BS'78, is principal of Nashville's Murrell School. (Harrison McClary)

Vanderbilt now supplies more than 90 percent of student teachers to the school, which is led by principal Susan Siegel, BS'78, and assistant principal Tyisha Walker, PhD'25, and counts numerous Vanderbilt alums on the teaching staff. "They will do anything to support their students, and Susan really sets the stage for that. There is so much love there," Capizzi says. She's been placing students at the school for about 20 years, helping bridge the gap between theory and practice for students interested in working with children with emotional and behavioral difficulties.

"Especially with this population, you learn by doing and seeing. You can talk about theory and pedagogy, but until you are working with real live humans in a place where no two minutes-never mind two days-is alike, you don't really learn it," Capizzi says. "On the other hand, when someone starts to read or understand multi-digit multiplication, it's so exciting." Classes are kept small, and teachers learn how to deal with emotional outbursts and physical altercations, as well as self-care and mutual support.

"Working at Murrell is not for 99 percent of the population, but for the 1 percent, there's not anywhere else they want to be," says Siegel, who, along with Capizzi and Associate Professor of the Practice Joey Staubitz, is very selective about the Vanderbilt students they place there for field experience. "The kids at Murrell show challenging behavior, but they also have complex language abilities and may be outthinking you."

Working at Murrell is not for 99 percent of the population, but for the 1 percent, there's not anywhere else they want to be.

That makes for a challenging but rewarding environment to teach in, Staubitz says, where students are exposed to some extreme behavior in the classroom that might seem initially overwhelming. Even in the most extreme situation, the school has a policy of not using restraints unless a student poses risk of harm to themselves or others-and grace and compassion are standard.

"We tell the kids, you can have the worst day possible, when everything goes wrong, but the next day is a fresh start," Siegel says.

Jessica Moses and Kate Williams, Vanderbilt Peabody graduates, set up their classroom for students with emotional and learning disabilities. (Harrison McClary)

Teacher Kate Williams, BS'19, MEd'25 came to Vanderbilt knowing she wanted to work with emotionally disabled kids and was drawn to Murrell for the sense of mutual care among teachers and students. "The students we service typically feel unwelcome and uninvited in a lot of spaces, so getting to cultivate a community that not only accepts but celebrates difficulties makes it a really special place to be," Williams says. "It's rare to find so many people dedicated to what they do."

Williams taught at Murrell as an undergrad at Peabody before returning for her master's, focusing on the school for her capstone project. Her research has focused on a practice called Acceptance and Commitment Training, where teachers set goals based on their values, which they can then return to when facing issues in the classroom. "You can learn to do these perfect lessons for your peers at Vanderbilt, and then a desk gets thrown or a fistfight breaks out, and you've got to scramble," says Williams, who now teaches full time at the school. "Falling back on this training helps bring a level perspective and empathy, so when these outbursts occur, you can learn how to facilitate restorative conversations."

Back row, left to right: Stephanie Alley, Eileah Pye, Susan Siegel, Kate Williams and Michael Bruebach. Front row, left to right: Katrina Vogel, Kerrin Gerson, Grace Branan, Katie Prysant, Jessica Moses and Tyisha Walker. (Harrison McClary)

After all, she says, many of the students at the school don't have good models for constructive dialogue and need to learn those skills along with the academics in the classroom. As Williams has learned to triage behavioral issues, she says, it's helped her implement other skills she learned at Vanderbilt. "Year one, you are running around just trying to teach anything, but you come back year after year and are able to step back and encompass more of the tools you already had in the beginning," she says.

Learning to teach in that challenging environment is the best preparation for a teacher going on to any situation. "The love and care Murrell teachers show for the humanity in each child truly transfers to new teachers," Capizzi says, "and that's what gets them excited and makes them fall in love with being in a space like that."

-Michael Blanding