The Department of Urban Education's Urban Secondary Education Program offers teacher candidates a personalized and unique experience through its six distinguishing features.
1. Preparation as Urban Educators - teacher candidates explore a wide array of topics about the urban environment and social context and complete observation hours and fieldwork in an urban setting.
2. Urban Education Writing Workshop - teacher candidates who need to improve their writing skills enroll in the Urban Education Writing Workshop.
3. Urban Clinical Setting and Fieldwork - teacher candidates complete a year-long clinical experience in an urban secondary classroom, building their pedagogical content knowledge and examining the many dimensions of an actual classroom.
4. Great Urban Teacher Symposium (GUTS) - For the Symposium, each student teacher prepares an e-portfolio and presents elements of it to fellow student teachers, department faculty, and clinical evaluators. Through the e-portfolio and presentations, teacher candidates illustrate how their teaching embodies the SUPER6 and reflect on their development through the clinical experience.
5. Orientations - teacher candidates attend three orientations to better understand The Department of Urban Education's Urban Secondary Education Program policies, procedures, and expectations. Teacher candidates examine the importance of academic responsibility and taking ownership of their own educational process.
- New Teacher Candidate Orientation (NTCO) - teacher candidates participate in team building activities and tour an urban community, learning about its history and landscape. They also learn about resources at RU-N and program requirements.
- Pre-Clinical Orientation (PCO) - teacher candidates review the requirements for Cluster IV: Clinical Experiences, program completion, and certification. They are provided with an outline of the clinical experiences.
- Clinical Orientation - teacher candidates and their field evaluators review together the formative and summative field evaluation forms, as well as clinical expectations.
6. Individualized Advisement - teacher candidates meet with an advisor every semester to review their individual plan of study.