FIELDWORK SUMMARY GUIDELINES 2024-2025 

Six of your courses at the University of Mount St. Vincent require fieldwork hours to meet New York State requirements for Teacher Certification. Fifty hours of fieldwork will take place in a General Education setting and fifty hours will be in a Special Education setting.

Fieldwork experience must be within your certification area only (Pre-Kindergarten through Grade 2). Thus, the classroom must be learning at an academic level of grade 2 or below.
(Please Note: Student Teaching must be done at actual grade level, meaning students cannot be older than 7 years of age.)

Fieldwork required in a Special Education setting may be fulfilled by observing in a self-contained classroom, a 1:1 school setting, or an inclusion classroom (i.e., a General Education setting that contains students with IEPs) where you focus on the child(ren) with disabilities. Of course, self-contained classrooms may only be used for Special Education hours. Therefore, if you are working in an educational setting that is designed ONLY for students with disabilities, you will have to plan to observe in a general education setting to meet requirements for those five courses that require general education hours.

According to the NYS Department of Education, each student’s fieldwork portfolio must exhibit “diversity”. This means that you cannot do all your fieldwork experiences in the same school. It is the student’s responsibility to make sure that fieldwork experience is varied. 

• There is a total of 100 hours of fieldwork required. You must have a minimum of four school locations throughout your graduate program.

• A specific school may be used for a maximum of 50 hours out of the total 100 required; 10 hours is the minimum number of hours that must be documented in the remaining 3 settings. 

Sample breakdown:
50  hours – School A (EDUC 710) 

20 hours – School B 

20 hours – School C 

10 hours – School D (Reading Clinic) 

There are two components to fieldwork. Your fieldwork logs, including activities, will be completed electronically on Watermark. For Watermark instructions, click here. In addition, this classroom observation form, documenting the days you observed in a classroom, must be completed by you (date, start and end time etc.), signed by your classroom (cooperating) teacher, and uploaded to Canvas. ELECTRONIC SIGNATURES ARE NOT ACCEPTED. (The classroom observation form is not applicable to EDUC 622.) 

Remember, the fieldwork must relate to the course content as per the exemplars posted on Canvas. For example, if you are taking EDUC 621 (Teaching Literacy) all your experiences must relate to emergent literacy, phonics instruction, writing, etc. Please type using standard English and pay attention to spelling and grammar when describing topics and activities. Your fieldwork submission is worth 15% of your grade and points will be deducted for careless writing.

YOU MAY NOT USE THE SAME FIELDWORK HOURS FOR TWO COURSES. 

At registration, you will be required to confirm your fieldwork placements during the past semester. This record will fulfill the diversity requirement necessary for graduation.  

Dr. Donn is our Fieldwork Coordinator. If you have specific questions about fieldwork that your instructor or coordinator cannot address, e-mail ldonn@sarasch.myiqsolutionsllp.in