School of Education Office of Field Experiences

From service learning to student teaching, field experiences play a critical role in helping teacher candidates develop their own teaching in a school environment. Field experiences provide a bridge between gaining knowledge through coursework and becoming competent members of the teaching profession who can make informed instructional decisions. All field experiences and student teaching placements are supervised by qualified faculty and provide candidates with experience in a variety of communities and with diverse students.

All teacher candidates in undergraduate programs leading to initial certification engage in at least 100 hours of field experiences integrated with coursework prior to student teaching. Candidates in dual certification programs: Early Childhood/Childhood and Childhood with Special Education engage in 150 hours of field experiences prior to student teaching. Candidates in all programs participate in two student teaching placements of approximately seven weeks each. The culminating experience for teacher candidates, student teaching, allows candidates to participate fully in a learning community.