The Professional Internship

The Department stresses the importance of supervised field experiences throughout its programs, which complement on-campus course work in education. The full-time professional internship, student teaching, is the capstone experience of the various teacher education programs. During this activity, there is a developmental process at work, designed to lead to the professional and personal growth required to enter the profession. The belief of members of the program faculty is that the success of this experience is enhanced when students have the opportunity to work under the supervision and mentoring of experienced College faculty familiar with their previous and ongoing development.

Thus, the policy of the Elizabethtown College Education Department is to place interns in cooperating school districts in the local area so College faculty may supervise student teaching experiences, while maintaining their other responsibilities on campus.Requests for exceptions to this policy must be presented formally to the clinical faculty and staff of the Department as a group. To receive such an exception, students must demonstrate convincingly that an alternative placement decidedly would be more beneficial to their professional and personal development than completing the experience at a local site. Convenience or increased visibility for job searching are not considered important enough to earn an exception to Department policy.

Note: No courses may betaken concurrently with Education 470 (Internship) and Education 490 (Exit Defense of Professional Portfolio) without the written permission of the Education Department.