In the traditional student teaching experience, the teacher candidate might observe the "real" teacher and conduct small parts of a few lessons, but not get enough opportunities to practice and develop professional skills. At the other extreme, some teacher candidates find themselves suddenly given full responsibility for instruction while the cooperating teacher leaves the room. Unfortunately, despite its importance in growing new teachers, the student teaching experience has been left largely to chance. This article describe a new model of student teaching based on co-teaching, implemented by St. Cloud State University in 2003. Instead of being either relegated to a desk in the corner of the room or thrust to the front of the classroom to sink or swim, student teachers at St. Cloud work with the cooperating teacher to plan and deliver instruction from the first day. The cooperating teachers and teacher candidate use co-teaching strategies like station teaching, parallel teaching, and differentiated teaching where appropriate, and the teacher candidate gradually assumes more responsibility. Studies conducted at St. Cloud have established that students in co-taught student teaching classrooms outperform students in traditional student teaching arrangements--and students in classrooms with no student teacher--in reading and math. The articles gives guidelines for universities and school districts that want to implement a co-teaching model in their own student teaching programs.