Unified Early Childhood/Special Education

Keuka College’s unified early childhood education program is designed to prepare educators to teach a diverse child population, with opportunities for employment in school, agency, and other settings.

It’s a rigorous and exciting program, offered in a supportive environment that will lead to certification in early childhood and special education from birth to grade 2.

You will learn and apply the principles of developmentally appropriate practice, teaching that is coordinated to the skill and cognitive level of the age group and individual student. It involves making expectations of children’s capabilities based on their age while bearing in mind that every child develops at a different rate and in a different way, making it important to get to know each child. It also involves being aware of the social and cultural context the child has experienced in order to understand their responses and make the transition to formal schooling smoother.

Central to your educational experience are the annual, 140-hour Field Periods, two of which are aimed at providing you with real-world teaching experience in the classroom and other settings, such as as agencies, resource centers, home settings, etc., along with an additional 35-plus hours of course-embedded field work. You will learn to work with diverse populations and demographics, in terms of developmental levels, family incomes, backgrounds and cultures, and will learn to be effective advocates for young children and their families.

“As a result,” says Dr. Debra Dyer, associate professor of education, “students are more than prepared to go into student teaching — they have incredible experience.”

Field periods are “transformative,” says Division of Education Chair Patricia Pulver: “Students who complete Field Periods are poised and professional when they go on interviews — they’ve done it multiple times.”

As with all Keuka education programs, general education and special education are unified and integrated throughout the curriculum, so you will be equipped to work with children of various developmental levels. And that is especially important as classrooms become increasingly diverse, with multiple levels of development represented among students. A firm grounding in general education makes you a stronger special education teacher and vice versa.