Fieldwork and Student Teaching

At every point in the program, students relate their work with children in the classroom to ideas generated in their seminars. During their course of study, students usually fulfill field placement requirements in the first two years two days a week at the College’s Early Childhood Center and/or in local public school classrooms. (Internships may be available in the first year at the Early Childhood Center.) For their student-teaching, students in the second year are placed three days a week each semester in appropriate public school classrooms for each track.

Students are supervised by classroom teachers carefully chosen for their ability to model a vision of practice grounded in observation, developmental theory, and authentic assessment. The program has arranged student-teaching placements in a variety of public, independent, urban, and suburban schools in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut that serve children from different socioeconomic backgrounds.. In the event that a student already is employed as a full-time teacher, the supervisor is a member of the Art of Teaching faculty.