Early Childhood Education
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Excellent teachers come from many backgrounds, but they seem to share certain characteristics. Enthusiasm, creativity, patience, compassion, hard work, a belief in the potential of every child—all are vital to teaching. As one teacher put it, “You have to see teaching as more than a job. It is more like a calling that requires a strong desire to help people and to enjoy solving challenging situations. Helping students to learn is its own intrinsic reward.”

About the Program

The Early Childhood Education Major requires an Early Childhood Special Education Minor. If you complete this program you are licensed to teach at the Early Childhood level, ages 0-8, regular education and special education (grades~PK-3). For specific course requirements, click here.

Students majoring in Elementary Education are able to add-on an Early Childhood Education program through a summer program. This program also requires an additional state content test and student teaching in a Pre-Kindergarten/Kindergarten setting.

Special Opportunities

  • Through both volunteer opportunities and innovative teaching approaches that put you in a K-12 classroom, you’ll be an active learner closely involved in real-world situations designed to ensure your professional success. For example, the Early Childhood Integrated Curriculum Block (taken during the Spring prior to student teaching) will give you the opportunity to spend 6 weeks working full-time with a veteran teacher in an early childhood setting. This experience allows you to apply the theories and methodology learned in your coursework to real-life classroom teaching.
     
  • You will meet a diverse group of like-minded peers, take on leadership roles, interact with children and the community, volunteer for work that matters, and attend professional conferences across the country.

  • You may be lucky enough to work with one of the Neale Fellows, select teachers whose projects make a difference at their schools and who work jointly with education classes.
     
  • We feel that participation in student organizations provides a vital contribution to your pre-professional experiences. As such, the School of Education sponsors the following organizations: Association for the Education of Young Children, Kappa Delta Pi, Student Council for Exceptional Children, Student Wisconsin Education Association and the Student Council for the Social Studies.

Student/Intern Teaching

In the final step of your preparation for teaching, you will demonstrate practical competence as a student or intern teacher in one of the many schools that cooperate with UW–Stevens Point. You’ll encounter rich multicultural experiences, varied and meaningful opportunities for experimentation within classrooms, a sound understanding of educational pedagogy, and knowledge of the most current views regarding educational practices.

Our Faculty

Our faculty will remind you of your favorite middle school or kindergarten teachers, the ones who saw your potential then, and still do. They have been selected from nationwide pools of candidates for their subject matter knowledge, their ability to guide university students in intellectual discovery, and their strong research backgrounds. Our faculty members also bring practical skills with them as they have been award-winning teachers at the elementary and secondary levels. Over 90 percent of our courses are taught by full-time faculty members who hold a Ph.D. in their respective fields.