Synergy the Soaring Saturdays Tutoring Program: Are Teacher Candidates’ Perceptions about their Self-efficacy Impacted by an Experiential Learning Project as Part of a Graduate Special Education Course?

Master's-level teacher candidates enrolled in a private Catholic college in the suburbs of New York City articipated in a 10-week tutoring program that brought to campus parochial elementary school students with diverse learningabilities. The purpose of the program was twofold: to improve the teaching and learning of the graduate students.Teacher candidates completed the Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale at the beginning and again at the ompletion of the tutoring program and generated reflective entries into their journal after each session. Through a mixed-methods approach, quantitative and qualitative results indicate that the teacher candidates' hands-on experiences affected their teaching approach by motivating students, implementing alternative instructional strategies, and utilizing a variety of assessment methods.