Field Experiences
Graduate Internships
The Placement Process
The first step for all students is to make an appointment with the Field Experience Office by emailing them at feo@wheelock.edu or calling (617)879-2165. You will not be eligible to visit any internship locations until you check with us.
It is most important to keep in close contact with the Field Experience Office at each step of your search. Please do not call schools on your own without notifying us. Schools can get overwhelmed with calls and visits. Our role is to support you in your search and to keep the process as streamlined and hassle free as possible.
Using an Employment Site for a Placements
When a student has a paid position in a care or education setting other
than a Wheelock partnership site, the graduate school will supervising that
student in that site. Such a student must complete a site approval application
through the Field Experience Office.
What is an intern?
Interns are teachers-in-training whose opportunities for learning, whose formal and informal school-based responsibilities, and whose relationships with the school, the supervising practitioner, and the children they work with differ from those of student teachers. Interns typically spend an entire year in a single classroom learning to co-teach with a mentor teacher. They work towards sharing the classroom and teaching responsibilities with their mentors, including planning curriculum, implementing activities and lesson plans, assessing children's learning, and communicating with families.
What are the benefits of an internship?
- Experiencing a full school year in the same classroom
- Mentoring from an experienced teacher
- Seeing children's growth over a year in both content area and social /emotional development
- Becoming an integral part of the teaching team and school community
- Seeing the evolution of teaching practices over the course of a year
- Forming relationships with other interns for support, reflection, and shared learning experiences
- Establishing a classroom climate and culture
- Curriculum development and implementation over the course of a year
- Modifying the learning environment to meet children's and curricular needs
- Using assessment data to modify curriculum and instruction
- Communicating with families
- Deepening understanding of children's backgrounds (race, language, culture, gender, families, special needs) and using that knowledge to inform practice
Preparing for an Internship
The internship programs proceed through three phases: summer prerequisite coursework, intensive intern teaching experience, and post-clinical coursework. During the intensive phase, students work full-time, in a co-teaching role, as paid interns in a classroom at one of Wheelock's partner schools, simultaneously completing a series of courses and seminars lined to the internship. The range of stipends run from $5,000 to $12,000 for 2005-2006.
Is it worth it?
For a variety of reasons, Wheelock students have found that their internship experiences have been intense but "well worth it" because of the breadth and depth of their experiences in the classroom, in the school, and in the profession. Generally, students who have done internships feel more confident and better prepared to assume responsibility for their own classrooms, and to take on leadership roles in their new schools, the following year. While most interns earn a stipend, in the long run, it is the quality of the experiences rather than the amount of the stipend that matters most.
