Teacher Education: Areas of Study

• Elementary Education
• Secondary Science

The Teacher Education Department offers a baccalaureate degree in elementary education and a secondary science composite degree in physics, chemistry, biology, and earth science.

Both degree programs are designed around a cohort model, highlighting the importance of collaboration and teamwork as necessary preludes to being change agents who will gradually transform the educational system for American Indian students.

Elementary Education

The elementary teacher education program is committed to helping all students learn. The teacher candidates will get the opportunity to apply and adapt a multitude of teaching principles to meet the needs of diverse student populations. Multicultural education is taken to heart wherein inclusiveness is seen as an essential component of this program. Consequently, there is a strong commitment to fully implementing best teaching practices that encompass the latest models of inquiry-based instruction and brain-based instructional strategies that differentiate instruction to meet the needs of all the students.

Integral to these best teaching practices is the exploratory and hands-on methodologies which emphasize engagement, learning as a process, the need to begin with students’ own ideas and concrete experiences in creating new and deepened understandings of the world around them. In addition, technology is explored in its many formats in order to provide the teacher candidate with as many tools as possible in the pursuit of teaching excellence.

The elementary teacher education program prepares the candidates for licensure to teach grades one to eight. Admittance to this program of study requires completion of all general education requirements with a GPA of 2.5. After successful completion of the first semester of courses, the teacher candidates are required to take and pass the Praxis One exam. If this exam is successfully completed, the candidate continues his/her course of study completing all methods course requirements. Prior to the final semester, when student teaching is scheduled, the candidates must successfully pass the Praxis Two exam.

Secondary Science

The main objective of the Native Ways of Knowing teacher education program is to define and implement a significant change in how science is understood and how science is taught in high schools on the Turtle Mountain Reservation. Consequently, there is dedication to pursue this vision by adopting and fully implementing best teaching practices that encompass the latest models of inquiry-based instruction and brain-based instructional strategies.

The Native Ways teacher education program prepares the candidates for licensure to teach grades 7-12 in physics, biology, chemistry or earth science. Admittance to this program of study requires completion of all general education requirements with a GPA of 2.5. After successful admittance to the program, the candidates begin their course of study as juniors in college.

After successful completion of the first semester of courses, the teacher candidates are required to take and pass the Praxis One exam. If this exam is successfully completed, the candidate continues his/her course of study completing all methods course requirements. Prior to the final semester, when student teaching is scheduled, the candidates must successfully pass the Praxis Two exam.