Educators in Context and Community (ECCO)

Educators in Context and Community (ECCO) Learning Center
Formerly known as Partners in Context & Community (PCC) Learning Center

• Take your education classes to learn how to teach.
• Take your “content” classes to learn what to teach.
• Take ECCO to learn about who you’re going to teach.

Educators in Context & Community (ECCO) is a comprehensive career-based professional development learning community for education majors and others who work with children. We focus on acclimating educators to the diverse cultures and communities—urban, rural, and suburban—which their students bring with them into the classroom. We focus on preparing our members both socially and emotionally for the rigors of teaching. We focus on cultural competence—being aware of and able to work in diverse settings with diverse students. We focus on an educator knowing thyself, knowing thy students, knowing thy community, and knowing thy profession.

ECCO is open to all education majors—freshman through senior year. While ECCO is housed in Kohl Hall, upperclassmen members live both on- and off-campus.

Name Change.
We are changing our name to Educators in Context & Community—changing “partners” in Partners in Context & Community to “educators”—to highlight the “who” that belongs in this learning community and to retain the focus of the learning community: to prepare educators for the contexts and communities in which they teach.

Program Change.
ECCO is adding to its list of contexts and communities. Traditionally, we have prepared educators for urban settings. We recognize that preparation for one community does not necessarily prepare you for all communities. Therefore, we are adding rural and suburban contexts to our program. Students will be able to explore all three contexts in field placements, in academic coursework, and in extra- and co-curricular activities.Members will go outside their “comfort zone” the first couple semesters in ECCO, then return to a teaching context they grew up in. But then, members will choose to focus on a specific context concentration area—and go into more depth and become more acclimated to its particular issues, assets, limitations, and opportunities.