MEd Middle Grades Education

DePaul University’s Middle Grades Education Master of Education program is a cohort program administered in collaboration with the Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL) that requires special admission. Please contact the Graduate Admissions office for more information.

The Master of Education program in Middle Grades Education prepares teachers for eligibility for a teaching license and IL endorsement in grades 5-8 (ie., Math; Science; Language Arts; Social Science). 

The mission of the DePaul University College of Education’s Middle Grades Teacher Education Program is to prepare educators who have passion for, understanding of, and commitment to working with young adolescents. We prepare educators who foster equitable, intellectually rich, socially just, and compassionate learning environments for diverse middle level youth. To accomplish this goal, our program is designed to cultivate in teacher candidates the pedagogical skills, subject area understandings, and social conscience necessary to enact thoughtful teaching practice. We aim to prepare critical, creative educators who continually reflect on and inquire into their practices in order to further their own and their students’ learning. Our teacher candidates develop a broad understanding of the contextual factors that impact the teaching, learning and growth of middle grade learners, including the ways in which society shapes our views of middle grades learners and the social, emotional, cognitive, spiritual, and physical dimensions of healthy adolescence. Through the integration of course work and field experiences, candidates learn about and apply interdisciplinary theories and practices that enable them to promote the intellectual curiosity, personal and academic excellence, and social and self-awareness of diverse middle level youth.

Students entering the program must be able and willing to devote themselves to a program requiring a minimum of 100-110 hours of daytime field experiences in schools. These school-based clinical hours are completed in conjunction with methodology courses that require students to spend daytime hours in schools. In addition, the student must spend a minimum of 10 weeks in full-time student teaching.