Early Childhood Certificate

Accelerated Certificate

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  • Program starts January 2010
  • Financial aid deadline Nov. 30

The Accelerated Early Childhood Education Certificate program is ideal for working adults, especially parents. You can take advantage of the opportunity to learn to be an effective pre-school teacher with more evenings at home. It’s a full-time program that requires only part-time campus attendance while maintaining valuable in-class experiences such as demonstrations and special guest speakers.

Benefits

The Early Childhood Education Certificate is offered for those who want to learn the basics and wish to be an effective assistant teacher. We offer a 35-credit selection of our courses that concentrate on basic facilitation of learning and curriculum practices.

Some people choose the certificate as an intermediate goal toward the Associate of Applied Sciences Degree or they find it useful when they move to other states or, as an international student, when they return to their home country. Although not required in Washington, many other states require a certificate for employment.

What to Expect

This program consists of a specific group of students enrolled to begin a pre-selected,full-time schedule of coursework in Winter 2010, continuing together through Spring and Summer. Students from this cohort, who successfully complete all required coursework will be granted the Early Childhood Education Certificate in Summer of 2010.

You’ll go through the program with a single group (cohort) of students and learn with the same professor throughout the program. This approach encourages strong relationships among students and instructor and supports effective learning in online interactions and small group meetings.

Although the course credits are identical to those of the existing certificate, courses in this certificate are scheduled so that at least half of the credit hours are small-group, out-of-classroom hours. They may be completed through online discussions, online assignment submission, small-group out-of-class meetings and individual out-of-class assignments working directly with children.

Students in this accelerated cohort can take additional courses and continue on to earn one of NSCC's Associate Degrees through the existing Early Childhood Education program. Courses are available concurrently or after completing the certificate.