Teaching Exceptional Children Program
In 2010, the Alliance for Catholic Education at the University of Notre Dame will begin a new academic program that instructs Catholic School teachers who wish to develop skills to meet the needs of children with mild to moderate disabilities in an inclusionary classroom: Teachers of Exceptional Children (TEC). The TEC program is a one year certification program in which a licensed Catholic School teacher receives an additional license from the State of Indiana as a teacher of students with exceptional needs: mild interventions. The TEC program is responsive to meeting the needs of all students in Catholic schools across the country.
Participants engage in two weeks of coursework from the middle of June to the beginning of July. After these two weeks, participants in the program must complete 6 credit hours online for both the fall and the spring semesters. TEC participants complete a practicum which requires them to teach in a setting where they can work with a child with a mild to moderate disability. The TEC program also seeks to positively impact entire school communities by requiring participants to sit on or establish a pre-referral team at their school.