EDU296C

Education

The practicum internship course is designed to build a strong connection between educational theory and meaningful classroom practice by providing exposure to practical knowledge, skills, and dispositions of an effective educator. Authentic classroom experiences serve as a foundation for candidates to build and discuss the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of an effective teacher. Course participants will progressively develop new teaching capacities and key understandings as they gradually phase into additional responsibilities throughout the internship. Practicum internship course participants will develop skills in instructional design and lesson planning, ensuring they address the unique needs of all learners. This includes learning how to design lessons that incorporate modifications and accommodations, enabling every student to access the curriculum and experience success. Course participants will also learn effective ways for assessing, monitoring, and reporting student progress in ways that clearly and meaningfully promote ongoing growth and development. Additionally, they will investigate and apply instructional delivery methods, facilitation strategies, and teaching approaches that are developmentally appropriate for teaching methods within both the Arts and Language domains. Through these experiences, candidates will gain the ability to create engaging lessons that respect students’ stages of growth, interests, cultural backgrounds, and unique learning needs.
Teacher in Residence and Traditional program participants will document experiences matching the certificate the program leads to as closely as possible. Participants will be required to document experiences that expose them to the full breadth of academic content within the targeted certificate area, across varying elementary grade levels. The CAC practicum program requires a minimum of 45 clock hours of classroom field experience per semester in conjunction with enrollment in the corresponding practicum course. The practicum internship experience requires a total of 90 clock hours over the duration of two full 16-week semesters. At the conclusion of the first 8-week internship (completing 1/2 of the required 45 hours), the traditional practicum student will switch placements. Observation with a second teacher allows for the practicum student to experience different teaching styles, methods, strategies, and grade levels.

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