Early Childhood Education Program

Through our program, you’ll be certified in Pennsylvania and skilled in the content requirements mandated by the Pennsylvania Department of Education. Your foundational coursework for the bachelor’s degree in early childhood education will teach you how to put educational theory into practice by pairing evidence-based teaching methodologies with the latest technology.

Log more than 200 hours of field experience, and embark on your student teaching semester in your junior year. Partner districts include Annville-Cleona, Cornwall-Lebanon, and Cumberland Valley. During the semester before you begin student teaching, we will pair you with your mentor teacher so you can start to acclimate to your classroom and develop a relationship with your supervisor.

With a rigorous mock interview process and plenty of field experience, you’ll be ready to make a difference in the lives of children wherever you teach.

Discover Your Degree Pathway

• Apply to our bachelor’s degree in early childhood education for first-year undergraduates.
• Master your degree requirements, from child development to program and curricular design.
• Tackle your Pennsylvania teaching certification requirements with the help of a dedicated faculty advisor.

Teach Like a BOSS: Soft Skills for Elementary Students

At larger universities, you may not work with young students until your student teaching semester. But at LVC, we help our early childhood education majors get experience in the field as early as their first or second semester.

Join the BOSS (Building Our Soft Skills) program to gain classroom experience and make an impact on your students’ lives right away. BOSS helps local third graders learn soft skills such as self-esteem, problem-solving, and coping with anger, so they can be even more successful as they tackle the Common Core curriculum. Develop a portfolio of lesson plans and worksheets—as early as your sophomore year.

Our education faculty understands what it takes to be a great teacher.

They’ll make sure you gain hands-on experience in their research areas, such as studying the positive effects of exercise on special needs students or writing lesson plans for students taking field trips to the Antique Automobile Museum in Hershey—real-world activities that support your understanding of early childhood development.

What Makes Studying Early Childhood Education at LVC Special?

• Learn how to teach from our award-winning faculty, who are experts in areas including special education, technology, and early intervention.
• Receive support for your student teaching semester and share resources with other majors in our junior year Student Teaching Co-op.
• Join our student PSEA chapter or present in our yearly conference for education majors.

What You Can Do with an Early Childhood Education Degree

LVC’s Education Department is ranked nationally by the National Council on Teacher Quality for its undergraduate secondary teacher prep program. Thanks to our long-standing relationships with partner school districts throughout the region, we know how to prepare you to jump feet-first into your own classroom.

Recent education graduates work as teachers, assistants, principals, school administrators, and as project managers in a variety of settings. You’ll be prepared to navigate a teaching position in public and private school districts or tackle an education manager position in an early learning center. You might also wish to work for children and youth organizations across the United States and abroad, like Teach for America, or become a Fulbright Scholar in South Korea like a recent elementary and special education double major.

Because of the strength of our teacher prep program, Education majors often receive job offers from schools like Manheim Christian Day School, Goddard School, Caroline County Public Schools (MD), Borger Independent School District (TX), and Flood Brook School (VT), after graduation. Other graduates pursue graduate-level programs in educational classroom technology, literacy education, music education, science education, and school leadership.

About Early Childhood Education at LVC