Credits from Teaching Experience

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  3. Credits from Teaching Experience

The Feinstein School of Education and Human Development (FSEHD) offers a number of teacher certification paths for individuals with an earned bachelor’s degree.

Credential Review Pathway (CRP)

If you are a current or past educator seeking to:

  • re-issue your Expert Residency Preliminary Certificate
  • add another certification area
  • renew a certificate that is more than five years expired 
  • earn RI teacher certification if already certified in another state

our CRP is designed for you.

Understand the Prerequisites Needed

The CRP has a number of prerequisites in addition to an earned bachelor’s degree including academic excellence (minimum GPA of 3.0), and extensive teaching experience in the desired certification area. “Extensive teaching experience” is a full semester of supervised student teaching in the desired certification area (if you are recent graduate) or 270+ days of full-time desired professional teaching or 270+ days of full-time daily or long-term substitute teaching in the desired certification area. Work experience as a teacher assistant does not count. You need to be fully in charge of the class.

More Information on the Credential Review Pathway 

Changing Careers? Want to Become a Certified Teacher?

If you are not certified to teach but wish to become certified, the FSEHD can work with you to review the best path of these three paths to teacher certification depending on your undergraduate major or program:

RI Teacher Education Program (RITE) 

Students who hold the baccalaureate degree and who have majored in or completed a substantial amount of course work in an appropriate academic area (see list below) may pursue the secondary education teaching certificate in that area through the RITE program. This is not a degree program, and courses taken in this program cannot be used in any graduate degree program at Rhode Island College. This program is designed so that successful applicants can, in most cases, complete the required course work within four consecutive semesters.

Appropriate academic areas are Biology, Chemistry, English, French, General Science, History, Mathematics, Physics, Social Studies, World Languages (concentration in French, Portuguese, or Spanish, PK / K-12 certification)

Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT)

The Master of Arts in Teaching program (for secondary education) begins with the selection of candidates who already possess a baccalaureate degree and who have potential for success in rigorous academic studies and in classroom teaching. The program moves to a carefully designed and coordinated sequence of courses and concludes with an intensive semester of student teaching. For additional information and requirements visit http://www.ric.edu/feinsteinschooleducationhumandevelopment/Pages/teacher.aspx.

Second Bachelor’s Degree (SBD) for Elementary Education Certification 

The Second Bachelor's degree is generally for those whose undergraduate GPA in their first bachelor's degree is in the range of 2.5-3.0. Candidates apply for this degree through the Office of Undergraduate Admissions: http://www.ric.edu/admissions/Pages/Second-Bachelors-Degree.aspx. There is a secondary admission process beginning with the Admissions Office and later to the FSEHD. This program is individualized, depending on candidate’s background, and generally runs between 45-80 credits and is completed in a minimum of 4 semesters.

Once all application materials have been received and processed, the Admissions Office will notify the applicant and appropriate department chair/advisor. At that time, the student must make an appointment with the designated faculty advisor to discuss and complete an official Plan of Study for the elementary education intended major.

The Plan of Study will specify which courses the student needs to complete in order to satisfy the requirements for a second degree in elementary education. All general education requirements and the college writing and mathematics requirements are waived for accepted second degree students. There is a secondary admission process to be formally admitted to the elementary education program once certain prerequisites and program requirements have been completed.