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Childhood and Special Education (Grades 1-6 and SpEd 1-6 Cert)

Student Teaching Generic

Why Choose Saint Rose for Childhood Education and Special Education?

Remember your favorite teacher, the one who understood how you learned best and whose smile was the greatest reward? Be that teacher for children of all learning abilities and from diverse backgrounds, especially those with special learning needs, in grades 1 through 6. Gain a solid foundation of skills and knowledge in teaching all subjects for this crucial stage of childhood development.

Through comprehensive coursework in a variety of disciplines, you’ll learn the type of teaching and collaboration expected in schools nationwide. Enjoy superlative classroom instruction from professors who are experts in special education and general education. Gain over 150 hours of fieldwork at local districts and in different teaching areas before getting the opportunity to lead your own classroom. You’ll grow your portfolio and career options with two New York State Certifications in both childhood (Grades 1-6) and childhood special education (Grades 1-6). With the combined academic knowledge and hands-on experience, you’ll graduate with the confidence to impact the next generation of learners.

Program Highlights

  • Gain practical experience in real classrooms at area school districts, including two student-teaching placements in different areas
  • Prepare to work with a wide-range of learners with and without disabilities
  • Enjoy a collaborative relationship with local Pk-12 school partners, that often call our College looking for qualified job candidates
  • Learn from faculty with practical teaching experience who are also actively involved in schools across the state
  • Study robust coursework across various academic disciplines
  • Participate in campus-based social and academic experiences with children and adolescents with disabilities
  • Gain access to instructional technology used by both professors and students

Saint Rose has the Next Generation of Educators

While an economic downturn and education policies once led fewer students to pursue teaching as a career, the tide is beginning to turn.

Read more about Future Teachers at Saint Rose

Course Requirements, Faculty, and Learning Objectives

Faculty

Candidates in professional education programs at The College of Saint Rose will:

  • Acquire and apply the knowledge, skills and dispositions of disciplines relevant to candidates’ projected educational or clinical roles.
  • Apply principles and theories of lifespan human development and learning in all of its diversity to education, service learning and clinical practice, and demonstrate a capacity and disposition to continuously update that knowledge and, therefore, practice according to the best emerging research in the field.
  • Plan and implement practice that is rigorous, comprehensive, inclusive, creative and motivating, inviting students’ analytical skills and promoting their dispositions to be lifelong learners.
  • Ensure that evaluation and decision-making are data-driven, multi-faceted, collaborative and recursive, and align instructional/clinical goals, practice, assessments, and standards.
  • Develop and demonstrate personal and professional values that foster the highest ethical standards of the profession; intellectual curiosity and open-mindedness; understanding and responsiveness to multiple social and global perspectives; and collegiality and collaboration among partners in the educational or clinical process that involve children, families, community members, and other professionals.
  • Promote optimal learning opportunities and environments for all individuals in the context of their experiential, cultural, and/or racial/ethnic backgrounds, including, but not limited to learners who are speakers of non-English languages, or who are gifted, have disabilities, are educationally challenged or who have different interests, ambitions or sexual orientations.
  • Demonstrate in their practice that oral and written language is a functional, as well as social and artistic tool, for communication and thought, and as such reflect the multiple literacies of local, national and global cultures.
  • Integrate a variety of technological methods and programs to enhance pupil learning and practitioner effectiveness, facilitate candidates’ acquisition of technological skills, and their dispositions to use them.

General Education

  • Classroom teacher of grades 1-6 (including co-teaching)

Special Education:

  • Special-education teacher of 1- 6 grade (including co-teaching)