Secondary Teaching (grades 6-12)

Overview

The full-time 13-month Secondary Teaching (grades 6-12) program from Lewis and Clark College provides a strong pedagogical foundation for middle and high school educators (grades 6-12)—helping you learn the art of great teaching, while empowering you to address issues of equity and access in schools. You’ll choose the content area of your choice and through a combination of on-campus courses and extensive, field-based teaching experiences, become skilled at helping adolescents learn and grow using creative, reflective, and culturally responsive approaches to teaching, learning, and research. You will be uniquely prepared to:

• Manage a classroom effectively
• Meet the needs of adolescents in ways that honor and extend their experiences while enhancing their capacity to solve problems
• Develop strategies to create democratic learning communities, drawing on research in theory and best practices
• Cultivate connections between learners and the world beyond the classroom

• Incorporate a range of teaching and technological resources

Practicum

Through our unique, yearlong teaching practicum, you’ll have the opportunity to learn hands-on—applying your coursework to a real-world environment and gaining critical insights that can only be gleaned by working in the field. Our Practicum & Placements team will review your preferences and desired content area and match you with a qualified teacher-mentor in the greater Portland metro area. 

Working side-by-side, you’ll remain in the same classroom for an entire school year, building trusting relationships with your students, their parents, and school staff. As the year progresses, you’ll gradually take on more and more responsibility, culminating with taking over the classroom and handling all of your teacher-mentor’s tasks for the final 6 weeks. As a result, school administrators often report that hiring one of our graduates is like hiring a second-year teacher.