Educational Aide Certificate of Achievement

This certificate provides students who want to work as a school aide, paraprofessional educator, after school aide or teacher assistant with essential knowledge of child development, how to work with diverse populations and children with special needs, hands-on curriculum development, and field work in an elementary school setting. In addition, they have an option to focus on behavior guidance, literacy development or health and safety. A recipient will qualify under state licensing regulations to be a preschool teacher and will have the course work to earn the Associate Teacher California Child Development permit. A grade of "C" or higher is required in all courses.

Based on past enrollment, we estimate we will have approximately 10-12 completers per year.

This certificate is designed to give students who want to work as teacher assistants, school aides, paraprofessional educators and after school aides basic knowledge of: child development, hands-on curriculum design, how to work with children with special needs, and how to work in a diverse community. It also offers field work in an urban public elementary school setting. Many students interested in education work as school aides while earning their undergraduate degrees in preparation for a credential program. This certificate gives them the skills and competencies they need to succeed in the job, while also giving them field work hours and qualifying them to fulfill licensing requirements for preschool teaching, and earn an Associate Teacher child development permit. This certificate is stackable with other ECD degrees and certificates and many of these courses can be applied to the Elementary Education AA-T.

Courses in this certificate are offered in the Early Childhood Development program, within the Social Science division. One course that is an elective possibility is an English course. Most of the core courses are part of both the AA degree in ECD and the AS-T in Early Childhood Education. ECD 11 is not part of those degree sequences but is, along with ECD 56 part of the AA-T in elementary education. In addition, many students majoring in other areas take ECD 11 as a way of deciding whether education is a viable career option for them. We would expect many of the students earning this certificate would already have an AA or even BA in another subject, but are returning to school to enable them to change careers or get specific training to work with children. Of the core courses, only ECD 11 is not offered every semester but is offered only in the spring. We plan to coordinate with the English department on scheduling of ENG 28 and ECD 59 so they are not offered in the same semester but are available to students who wish to take either as their elective option in a timely manner. ECD 41 is not offered every semester, but usually in the spring. ECD 50, 56, 54 and 62 are offered online, ECD 59 will be offered online as well.

Course	Title	Units	Year/Semester (Y1 or S1)
ECD 50	Principles and Practices of Early Childhood	3	S1
ECD 56	Child Growth and Development	3	S1
OR ECD 52	Childhood and Adolescence	3	S1
ECD 62	Child, Family and Community	3	S1
ECD 79	Teaching in a Diverse Society	3	S1
ECD 63	Early Childhood Curriculum	4	S2
ECD 11	Exploring Education	3	S2
ECD 60	Introduction to the Young Child with Exceptional Needs	3	S2
One elective from following list:
ECD 54	Child Health, Safety and Nutrition	3	S2
ECD 41	Strategies for Working with Challenging Behaviors	3	S2
ECD 59	Literacy in Early Childhood	3	S2
ENG 28	Classic and Contemporary Youth Literature	3	S2

n/a

Berkeley City College offers an school aide certificate; Loretta Kane, chair of the teacher education program was contacted, she has not yet responded. City College of San Francisco has a youth aide certificate and after school aide certificate; Kathleen White and Maria delRosario Villasana of their teacher education program were contacted and had no issues with our certificate proposal.