You will attend 10 seminars. These seminars lay the foundation for the future semesters. You will learn about setting up a successful classroom, behavior management, developing and executing lesson plans based upon Colorado Academic Standards, working with your school mentor, special education, and developing a strong literacy foundation with strategies to support content area reading and thinking. 

This semester consists of 7-8 seminars and begins in January. The major project for General Education teachers is a case study involving progress monitoring and data collection. This project calls for the teacher to collect background information regarding the student, including test scores, interviews with previous teachers and diagnostic testing.

The semester begins in May and ends during the second week of June. A reflective approach regarding the first year of teaching will be the underlying premise of this summer course. Seminar topics include advanced subjects in education theory and practice

This semester consists of eight classes, which focus on the study of classroom strategies as they relate to the cognitive, social, and emotional make-up of the student. The major project for this semester is a teacher work sample, which is an action-research product demonstrating the teacher’s ability to plan, deliver, and assess a standards based instructional sequence, document student performance, and reflect upon the effects of instruction as related to student learning.

The purpose of this semester is to support 2YALP teachers as they review important teaching strategies and critical thinking skills. General Education Teachers develop an Electronic Professional Portfolio designed to display their work with students and their qualifications as professional educators. Special Education teachers prepare for an internship and continue their literacy study from the previous semester focusing on fluency, vocabulary, morphology, sentence grammar, and comprehension. 

During the 35-hour internship, each teacher must complete the competencies that have been identified in coordination with the 2YALP teacher’s Field Coach. A Reflective Journal, with supporting documentation and data is submitted at the conclusion of the Internship.

Our teachers are working in the classroom as the primary teacher of record, earning a living as a teacher, while attending classes.  We believe that on the job training is the most effective way to streamline the pathway to becoming an educator. 

Because we serve such a diverse population, we must ensure that our teachers are prepared to support all students with different racial, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. All of our teachers take seminars in Special Education and English Language Learners, and our Elementary and Secondary teachers attend the Educating Children of Color Summit at Colorado College. We also provide 90 hours of culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education that is embedded within our curriculum.

Future teachers receive support from both the program and the school in which they work. The program assigns a field coach who observes the new teacher and provides feedback during the first year and a half. All field coaches are retired educators with years of experience and substantial expertise. Additionally, the school assigns a building mentor, who is an educator with a professional license. You and your mentor will work closely together your first year of teaching to complete Mentor/Mentee checklists and to get you settled within your school.

The Two-Year Alternative Licensure Program is continuously gathering data from our teachers for program improvement.   Teachers fill out feedback surveys after each session for the Instructors.