Become a New York State Certified teacher by graduation!

Barnard’s Urban Teaching program is the track to become certified as a teacher during undergrad! While technically a minor, this program is unique as you apply into it, and are placed in several years of fieldwork and student teaching. While this is technically a minor, the workload places it at more than a major, but it is definitely doable with planning ahead, and it’s incredibly rewarding. Each year’s cohort is around ten students, and it is a small, yet close-knit community of students who are becoming teachers.

Applications for current sophomores are due April 1, so here is your official information guide to join the coolest team of future educators at Barnard.

Within this program, you can select to be certified in elementary education (grades K-6), or secondary (grades 7-12). For secondary teachers, you select a “content area” to be certified in: English, Math, Social Studies, Science, or Foreign Languages.

Requirements:

Education Foundations: This is the introduction course for the education department. It’s the “Introduction to the psychological, philosophical, sociological, and historical foundations of education as way to understand what education is, how education has become what it is, and to envision what education should be.” This course lays a lot of the groundwork for what education is in America. There is also a discussion section.

Psychology: For this requirement, you must take either Developmental Psychology or Educational Psychology. For secondary students, you also can take Adolescent Psychology. I took Developmental Psychology, and it was really fun! We had projects with the Barnard Toddler Center, along with fun group projects.

Pedagogical Elective: For this requirement, you either take Science in the City, Math and the City, or Arts and Humanities in the City, depending on what your content area is. I took Arts and Humanities in the City, where you study liberatory theory and practices for ELA, History, and Arts education, what digital humanities look like in the classroom, and what critical literacy looks like. You have fieldwork attached to this course, where you are in teams and visit a public school in NYC to teach something in the realm of your course! My group led lessons on protest art, speeches, and we led a field trip to the Bronx Zoo. The fieldwork for this course ends up being 35 hours.

Foundational Clinical Experiences: You must complete 40 hours of independent fieldwork during or prior to the first year of admission to the program. This can be at a summer camp, mentoring program, or traditional classroom. You keep a journal of your fieldwork experience, write a reflective essay, and have a supervisor fill out a form. I did my hours at a summer camp I was already planning to work at, and it was really fun!

Content Core: Depending on your age and subject area, you have a requirement for the courses to take outside of your teaching certification.

  • For Elementary Certifications:
    • Two courses in history (one US History, one World History)
    • Two courses in the “main sciences” (Biology, Chemistry, Physics, or Earth Science)
    • One course in Statistics
    • One other course in college-level mathematics
  • For Adolescent Certifications:
    • One course in statistics
    • English: 36 credits in English
    • Foreign Language: 36 credits in French, German, Greek, Italian, Latin, or Spanish.
    • Mathematics: 36 credits in Mathematics
    • Science: 36 credits in science including 18 credits in the science (or each science) for which certification is sought: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, or Earth Science only
    • Social Studies: 36 credits, including 6 credits of American History; 6 credits of European or World History; 3 credits of non-Western study; and an additional 21 credits, chosen from History, Political Science, Anthropology, Sociology, and Economics.
      • For adolescent certifications, this content core becomes easier, as your major is likely this content area. For example, an English major’s requirements automatically fill this “content core” requirement for Secondary English.

Pedagogical Core: These four courses make up the courses you will take Junior and Senior year with your cohort for Urban Teaching.

  1. Multicultural Pedagogy (Junior Fall): This course focuses on “methods” for teaching—pedagogical methods, context, students, and content. This course especially focuses on multicultural teaching practices, and differentiating instruction for ELL students and students with disabilities. You are placed in a school where you conduct 50 hours of fieldwork, mostly observing and small-group work. This course is combined with elementary and secondary students, and you get to hear and think about both ages.
  2. Inclusive Approaches to Teaching Literacy: Theory and Practice (Junior Spring): This course focuses on teaching literacy, and the different schools of thought with teaching literacy. We explore teaching literacy in K-12 for students with disabilities, multilingual learners, and students from diverse cultural backgrounds. You continue your fieldwork placement from last semester, and have 50 more hours of fieldwork focused on literacy interventions.
  3. Critical Inquiry in Urban Teaching (Senior Fall): This course is about critical inquiry and reflection in the classroom. You are placed in fieldwork that you will then do your student teaching in, and you design a critical inquiry project to do data-driven interventions in your classroom. You attend your fieldwork once a week.
  4. Student Teaching in Urban Schools (Senior Spring): This course is your student teaching placement for your teaching certification, and you teach at your school five days a week, full time. You continue discussing lesson planning, assessments, meeting the needs of diverse learners, and what it’s like to be a student teacher. This is taken the spring of your senior year, and you only are allowed to take one other course. It’s not a traditional senior year spring, but after finishing this course (and the other requirements), you will be a certified teacher!

More information can be found on the Barnard Education website and @barnardeducation on Instagram.

Student Experiences:

This program is certainly a lot—time-wise, fieldwork-wise, and course planning wise. However, it IS doable, and it is incredibly rewarding. It is so incredible to be placed in fieldwork around NYC in order to understand the city better, to form relationships with students, and to understand education in a real-world context. I find we’re able to reckon with educational theory and the system in practice, in ways that non-urban teaching courses do not.

The education department is uniquely wonderful. The professors are SO kind, supportive, and knowledgeable, and they have experiences teaching in education that they bring into the classroom.

Also, not everyone in the program wants to teach all their life—many of us do not! This certification lasts 5 years before you need to get a higher degree, and many students have other areas we want to go into after we teach.

Oh, and, don’t let the “minor” label throw you off. This is more than a major. But then you don’t need to pay more to get another degree for a teaching certification!

Some other thoughts from students currently in the program:

  • “The supportive and immaculate environment that all the urban teachers and instructors from the education department bring into our classroom here, to help us mold future classrooms are more than anyone could ask for. But this program is most definitely a commitment.”
  • “I know I want to teach here in NYC and I also love my major and all of my classes here. The Urban teaching track is really hard and it takes a lot of time, and that time is worth it. It is very rewarding and allows me to do what I want to do. But I only have 4 years at this school, and I feel like I have to give up some of the classes or opportunities I would want to take. There are other ways to get the license that take more time and money outside of this school and these 4 years. But it is hard to balance now everything I want to do. Also, this school is so so expensive. It’s a hard decision to commit to.”
  • “Entering into a teacher-preparation program at Barnard College and participating in hundreds of hours of fieldwork in urban public schools has exposed me to the flaws and structural racism that are built into schools. Learning about and witnessing such injustice has ignited a passion in me to work towards dismantling and rebuilding the current systems directly in the classroom. Rather than stepping back from the inequalities present in schools, I encourage aspiring educators to dive in with a commitment to making public schools a safe place for every student regardless of race, gender, or identity.”
  • “There has never been a time in my education where I’ve learned so much in a school in a day. Also, the sigh and the “oh good for you” you get from people is really encouraging :)”

Classroom via Bwog Staff