Early Childhood Intervention Specialist

Gain the problem-solving skills you need to help young learners succeed, including coordination with fellow teachers and families to develop individualized plans for children with mild to intensive needs.

Students complete over 600 hours of field experience to ensure they are ready to enter this challenging, yet rewarding career.

This is the major you should choose if you want to teach young children age 3 through 8 (PreK-3rd grade) who have mild, moderate or intensive disabilities. You will be taking specially–designed intervention courses and field experiences that will prepare you to work with young children with special needs. This degree will allow you to teach children in specialized classrooms, resource rooms, as well as team teach as the intervention specialist in inclusive classrooms.

The Ashland University program is unique since students completing the degree in Early Childhood Intervention also complete the early childhood licensure program during the same four-year period. The early childhood license will permit you to teach as the regular education teacher in typical general education classrooms educating children in Kindergarten through 3rd grade.

Advantages of this major:

• Professors with extensive professional experience working with young children with special needs who teach and supervise you.

• Over 600 hours of teaching experience in both regular and inclusive classrooms in partner schools.

• Opportunity to receive up to a $4,000/year government grant: Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH).

• Ability to earn both an early childhood and early childhood interventionist license in four years.

• Learning the best practices in teaching, assessment and classroom management that will make you highly qualified and accountable for your students’ learning.

• Opportunities to expand your marketability by adding a grades 4-5 endorsement, reading endorsement or Spanish minor.

• Unique experiences that make you stand out: meeting professional children’s authors and illustrators, student teaching in the Southern United States or in 17 different countries.

• Training to be a nationally certified pre-school vision screener

• Learning the latest technology, such as SMART® Boards, and how to use them in primary classrooms

Job Outlook

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the need for special educators will continue to increase right past 2018. Such a shortage of special educators currently exists throughout the United States and the world that you will be able, literally, to take your skills wherever you wish to live and find employment as an intervention specialist.

About our Graduates

Graduates of our program are teaching throughout the United States. Three of our recent early childhood graduates are teaching in Osceola County, Florida. One of our graduates, Elysia McLaughlin, was named “New Teacher of the Year” at the prestigious Celebration School in Orlando, Florida.

Professional Organizations

• Division for Early Childhood of the Council for Exceptional Children

Student Organizations

• Kappa Delta Pi

• Schar Scholars