You will often hear staff refer to students and children throughout the CDLS program. Children refers to our youngest learners, your children, whom we have the privilege to learn alongside throughout the year. Students refer to our University of Minnesota college students and occasionally students from other programs around the twin cities, country, or the world. Throughout the program, students are engaged in many different ways.
We have students who you may see throughout the program, especially in the classrooms and the kitchen. In the full-day classrooms, students are employed to help care directly for children as well as help with meal preparation and we have several student teachers enrolled in CPSY 5991. In the part-day classrooms, students enrolled in CPSY 5281- Student Teaching in Early Childhood are in each classroom. Generally, 9-14 students per semester teach three hours per day alongside a mentor teacher.
In addition to these students who will spend a full semester or longer in our building, we also collaborate with instructors throughout the University to allow students to observe children, conduct research, create curriculum activities, and occasionally conduct interviews with staff. From time to time we have visiting students from other Universities or professionals in early childhood from other states or abroad that observe from one to several days to learn about our practices.
We hope that you will take a moment to introduce yourself to the students in our program and there may be times when you can support them directly by participating in a research study or answering a few questions on a survey. We hope that you will embrace this opportunity to help us shape the future of early childhood education.