Educators in Context and Community (ECCO)

We provide students with experience in urban, rural, and suburban schools.  Each of these communities have their own unique challenges.  By learning how to teach in multiple educational environments, ECCO students become well prepared to move forward as full time teachers after graduation.  

ECCO is dedicated to helping its participants to become partners in these environments—that is, making changes in their own lives to become dedicated, engaged members of the community, living, working, and staying long enough to make a difference in the circumstances and lives of kids and families in these schools.  

Beginning their first semester in the program ECCO members will take on a 50 hour field placement in a community different than the one they came from in high school.  During their second semester students will do another 50 hour field placement in another context different from their own.  In their third semester in the program they will be able to go to a school similar to the one they experienced in their own education.  In their fourth semester students will be asked to choose a contextual focus area and will spend the rest of their academic career in ECCO focusing on the context in which they hope to teach.  

All the while, students will engage in a variety of social, service, and professional development activities to hone their skills, knowledge and dispositions to become community-based teachers.