Learning can happen anywhere, so why limit the experience to a traditional classroom? That seems to be the logic attracting undergraduates to FGCU’s Child and Youth Studies program.
The curriculum track includes all of the expected preparatory classes for teachers – fundamentals of reading, growth and development, managing discipline, teaching for special needs and others – but it also offers courses such as social work, health professions and business. Students still amass all the prerequisites needed to take the teacher certification exam.
The senior year consists of an internship and a capstone project that advance the program at the internship site in measurable ways.
Graduates then go on to nontraditional teaching jobs or graduate study with the aim of working with youngsters in fields with education components, such as mental health counseling, occupational therapy, pediatrics, social work, family law – nearly anything involving young people.
“A lot of students don’t know what they want for their majors,” says Elizabeth Elliott, professor of early childhood education and program director. “So when they find out they can work with children in nontraditional teaching jobs without a teaching certificate, they are interested.”
The program replaced Child Studies, in which interest had all but disappeared a few years ago. Child and Youth Studies, introduced in 2012-13, offers two tracks that focus on children and their interactions in the home, school and community.
“Students are looking at the child’s behavior, about learning, about teaching in nontraditional environments,” she says.
Those settings include afterschool programs, museum programs and those that serve children who don’t attend traditional school because they are homeless or in shelters. Internship partners have included the Golisano Children’s Museum, the Imaginarium, the Edison-Ford Winter Estates, Naples Shelter for Abused Women and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Bonita Springs.
By fall 2014, the program had 46 graduates. Twenty more earned degrees at commencement last spring. And the placement rate is impressive. About half of all the interns are hired at their sites after graduation, Elliott says.
Most students in the program are glad to earn degrees in the College of Education but want a career free of standardized tests, hall passes, school lunches and regulated class periods.
They are attracted to programs such as that at the Heights Foundation in Fort Myers, where learning takes place after the school day ends. Education there is less formal.
Joshua Werthum, ’15, of Bradenton interned there after he tried working in a classroom in elementary education. The lesson plans, standardized test preparation and early hours were “too much,” he says. It was also not enough – not enough freedom as a professional.
“I do not want to be in a classroom setting,” Werthum says. “I prefer the afterschool program setting because it gives me a chance to be a little more creative with the learning activities.”
- Learn more about the College of Education’s programs
- Read a more in-depth version of this story in Pinnacle