Our mission is to develop beginning educators who make reflective and deliberate decisions that support and extend the learning of all students.
This mission guides all ESU educators and is supported by our ten commitments.
The Beginning Educator Outcomes, the Learning Cycle, and the Comprehensive Assessment Model provide vitality and cohesiveness to teaching and learning on a daily basis.
The six broad-based Educational Initiatives offer evidence of faculty and student innovation, scholarship, and ongoing engagement as reflective decision-makers.
Commitments Based on Beliefs
These beliefs are modeled by ESU faculty as students learn, practice, and reflect creatively and critically on the knowledge and skills inherent in the learning process.
Students will continue to develop competence and confidence through their sequential clinical and field experiences, which facilitate the connection among belief, theory, and practice.
ESU educators believe the process of making reflective and deliberate decisions supports and extends the learning of all students and must include an active commitment to:
- Acquire, articulate and integrate the essential knowledge, skills, and attitudes within and across various disciplines.
- Engage learners in order to develop and apply creative and critical thinking skills.
- Effectively communicate with learners, other professionals, families and community members, using a variety of appropriate methods.
- Build upon the learners' experiences, developmental levels, intelligences, learning styles, cultural backgrounds, abilities, and interests to ensure student success.
- Create respectful, responsible, prosocial learning environments that nurture, challenge, and engage learners.
- Plan, implement, and assess instruction that is congruent with identified outcomes and differentiated according to the needs of learners.
- Select from a repertoire of effective strategies to stimulate, refine, and promote individual student growth and achievement.
- Integrate a variety of effective teaching tools, to support and maximize the learning experience.
- Collaborate actively with colleagues, families, P-12 schools and educational advocates to improve teaching for the benefit of the learner.
- Exhibit professionalism through a coherent set of ethical behaviors, lifelong learning, and involvement in local communities and professional organizations
