Central to Teaching English Language Arts
For more than 175 years, Central has provided quality education to its teacher candidates. Our BSED in English Secondary Education prepares English majors to become highly qualified, engaged, and dynamic teachers certified in secondary English Language Arts in Connecticut. Our graduates develop their knowledge, strategies, and professionalism via excellent content and pedagogy experiences, and they often go on to become mentor teachers and innovative leaders in their school districts and professional organizations.
Program Features
- Study literature, cinema, linguistics, and writing with expert English faculty
- Learn and apply engaging and inclusive pedagogical theories and practices
- Focus on effective and innovative English Language Arts methods
- Engage in active fieldwork in public schools
- Apprentice to mentor teachers
- Complete a semester-long student teaching internship
- Develop leadership capacities in education and communication
- Attend coursework full- or part-time
- Co-build camaraderie and supports via small, cohorted classes
- Enjoy job market and career-focused mentorship both before and beyond graduation from a range of program faculty, mentor teachers, and clinical supervisors with decades of experience in CT public schools
Program Outcomes
The BSED in English Secondary Education program employs the National Council of Teachers of English Standards for the Initial Preparation of Teachers of English Language Arts (ELA) 7–12:
- Standard 1: Learners and Learning in ELA. Candidates apply and demonstrate knowledge of learners and learning to foster inclusive learning environments that support coherent, relevant, standards-aligned, differentiated, and antiracist/antibias instruction to engage grade 7–12 learners in ELA.
- Standard 2: ELA Content Knowledge. Candidates apply and demonstrate knowledge and theoretical perspectives, including antiracist/antibias ELA, pertaining to texts, composition, language, and languaging
- Standard 3: Planning for Instruction in ELA. Candidates apply and demonstrate knowledge of theories, research, and ELA to plan coherent, relevant, standards-aligned, differentiated, antiracist/antibias instruction and assessment.
- Standard 4: Implementing Instruction in ELA. Candidates implement planned coherent, relevant, standards-aligned, differentiated, and antiracist/antibias ELA instruction and assessment to motivate and engage all learners.
- Standard 5: Professional Responsibility of ELA Teachers. Candidates reflect on their ELA practice, use knowledge and theoretical perspectives to collaborate with educational community members, and demonstrate readiness for leadership, professional learning, and advocacy.
Check out the full publication of the NCTE guidelines.
Further Information and Contact
Our faculty and mentors work at the intersection of theory and practice so that students come away from the program with a dynamic teaching praxis. The links below and the subpages on this site contain more information about our program. If you have questions, please reach out to Dr. Amanda Greenwell, Program Coordinator for English Secondary Education, at greenwellamm@ccsu.edu . We are excited to work with you.