A woman teaches.

Field Experiences

We believe that the best way to learn your profession is to get out of the university classroom often and into schools, clinics, hospitals, day care centers and other places where professionals work with children and adults in a structured and guided way. Consequently, we provide our students with real-world field-based experiences while they are in our professional degree programs.

Our field experiences are built on strong collaborations between the College and local professional entities. Our students engage in purposefully crafted field experiences that cultivate a depth of knowledge, research-based practices, and professional ethics. These sequential experiences are designed to be cumulative and performance-based while preparing candidates to implement and evaluate effective practices with diverse populations in varied settings.

a teacher plays dolls with a student

Pre-Student Teaching

One important element of preparing to become a teacher is to spend a lot of time with K-12 students both in schools and through out-of-school experiences. Our programs build some of these experiences into specific courses and practicums with additional experiences available outside of those opportunities. We encourage students to start early in experiencing what it is like to work with children and youth.

A group of students in a classroom

Student Teaching

The culminating, capstone clinical experience for individuals studying to become teachers is their student teaching. Students wanting to become elementary or secondary educators complete one semester of student teaching. Students wanting to become early childhood or special education educators complete a second semester of student teaching in those areas respectively. Students typically begin their student teaching after completing all other course work.

A teacher reading a book to a student

Children and Families

Students wanting to work with young children, but not in school settings enroll in the Child and Family degree program. As part of the preparation provided in this degree students work in several field-based settings. One practicum site is in the EMU Children’s Institute and the other is the capstone internship for the program.

Skip Section Navigation