Introductory Field Experience for Teacher Preparation

Catalog description

CI 295A is designed to enable students interested in early childhood education as a potential major and career to gain experience observing and assisting in a variety of school and community settings. Students will be engaged in observing as well as tutoring individual children and small groups of children in pre-kindergarten settings as well as in kindergarten through fourth grade settings. As students have not yet been exposed to methods of instructional planning and delivery, their tutoring of individuals and small groups will be carried out under the direct supervision of a professional teacher. Through their observation and participation in these educational settings, students will develop an awareness of observation as a tool for understanding and analyzing educational environments, teaching and learning. They will develop an understanding of the nature of participant observation as well as a variety of frameworks and strategies that can be used for observation as well as the skills necessary to communicate observations professionally and ethically. Engaging in extended observations in educational settings provides students with an opportunity to enrich and deepen their understanding of a variety of educational concepts that they will encounter in prerequisite or concurrent courses including child development, English language learning and development, principles of human learning, individual differences in human ability including special needs students, cultural diversity, and contemporary issues in education and their impact on childhood educational settings. Finally, CI 295A will provide an opportunity for students to examine childhood education as a future career. They will be introduced to notions of teaching in general as a career as well as to specialized aspects of teaching in both pre-kindergarten and elementary school settings. Students will examine their own biographies as learners and the implications of their biographies for the development of a teacher identity and the potential suitability of childhood education as a career. Students will also be engaged in examining a variety of codes for professional and ethical conduct for educators. Through examining, critiquing and synthesizing these various articulations of professionalism, students will begin the development of a personalized code of ethical, and professional conduct.