Childhood Education Master’s Degree Programs

A master’s degree in childhood education from Bank Street Graduate School of Education prepares aspiring elementary school teachers to help children build a healthy foundation for social, emotional, and cognitive learning that will serve them throughout their lives.

At Bank Street, you will become well-grounded in child development and learn how to support the social, emotional, and intellectual growth of all students. You’ll gain the specialized skills and dispositions needed to work with students, primarily in grades 1 to 6, while developing an understanding that learning comes in the form of play, social relationships, and sensory experiences, as well as through curriculum and instruction in language and literacy, math, science, arts, and social studies. Your coursework and fieldwork experiences will provide many opportunities to develop leadership and communications skills as you work with your mentors and peers. As a student teacher, your supervised fieldwork will also include faculty-led conference groups where you’ll discuss and self-reflect on your own experiences and identify your own learning style and areas for growth as an educator.

Because of our location in New York City with its vast public school system, you’ll also learn social justice-oriented and culturally responsive practices that support and advocate for children and families with various racial, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds.

If you’re ready to take a transformative step in your career, consider a master’s degree program at Bank Street. Join our collaborative and supportive educational community today and earn your elementary education master’s degree and credentials from an institution that potential employers know and respect.

What Childhood Education Program Is Right for You?

Gard student with magnifying glass in science class

General Education

Become a teacher whose approaches to public and private school education support the growth, development, and learning of the whole child in the context of their community. This program is for teachers and prospective teachers who wish to work in first through sixth grades in a range of settings, including private and public schools.

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Special Education

Become an advocate as you learn about how disability is socially constructed at the levels of family, community, school, and the larger society.

Review your Bank Street Financial Aid Offer Letter

Special and General Education

Help young children thrive in special and general education learning environments. With Bank Street’s interdisciplinary and developmental-interaction approaches, you’ll learn to support the growth, development, and learning of the whole child in the context of family and community.

Cross-Age

These programs add flexibility to your career options with preparation to teach students from pre-K through middle and high school.

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Dual Language/Bilingual Education

Bilingual teachers are in great demand. If you’d like to work with emergent bilingual children from age birth to grade 6 across a range of settings. Programs are offered in Spanish or Mandarin.

Student teacher working with two Middle School children

Teacher Residencies

In our residency programs, you’ll earn your master’s degree and teaching certification while working as a paid teacher in a public high school before becoming eligible to be hired as a full-time teacher. Additionally, all cohort members receive a scholarship along with a stipend of up to $30,000.

Create Your Own Program

Design an individualized course of study in elementary education that is tailored to your own interests and career goals, including work in advocacy, educational policy, curriculum development, and other areas of the field.

Studies in Education—Teaching and Learning Track (MSEd, EdM, 30 credits)

Why Bank Street?

Our Approach

Bank Street’s developmental-interaction approach to teaching and learning recognizes that both children and adults learn best when they are actively engaged with materials, ideas, and people. Using academic, social, and emotional learning, you’ll instill in your students a love for lifelong learning, empowering them to build a future that fulfills their boldest plans and ideas.

Our Community

On campus and online, Bank Street students collaborate with faculty and their peers. They learn from our faculty of highly regarded experts and thought leaders who ensure that each student gains the tools to positively impact students and start the process of transforming schools and communities. As they work together, graduate students build strong relationships with each other and become a professional network that stays with them throughout their career.

Supervised Fieldwork

We’ll work with you individually to select supervised fieldwork opportunities that match your goals. You’ll gain the experience you need, working in grades 1-3 and grades 4-6 in general and special education, and in one of the largest public school systems in the nation. When you graduate, you’ll be highly prepared to work in many settings, including schools, museums, hospitals, community organizations, and more.

Meet our alumni

I think about my journey often. I’ve found that the Bank Street name carries a lot of weight, both in and out of the classroom—the merit of the programs, the investment in our children, the holistic style of engaging in a way that is open and accessible to all children.

Janai Gilkes - Childhood Special and General Education '20

Meet Janai Meet Our Alumni

Meet our alumni

To know people, to have connections—This is another Bank Street value—how we build relationships, like working together on the residency program. I think it’s going to prove to be a really good idea, and we’re curious about the ways that it’s going to roll out and have a great impact on both communities.

Meghan Dunn - Childhood General Education '08

Meet Meghan Meet Our Alumni

Danielle Quick, Bank Street Graduate School of Education '22, MSED in General and Special Education

Meet our alumni

Everything changes all the time, right? Sometimes by the next lesson you have to teach. By self-reflecting, I learned to look deeper—to identify something I wanted to change, see the reasons why, and figure out the supports that I needed to make it happen.

Danielle Quick - Childhood Special and General Education '22

Meet Danielle Meet Our Alumni

Meet our alumni

I do my best work when I focus on the strengths of students, staff, and parents. I won’t lie, my first few years of teaching were hard, but Bank Street prepared me to take on the challenge. In the dual general and special education program, classes are small and the approach is progressive. It fit who I am perfectly.

Rachael Beseda - Childhood Special and General Education '12

Meet Rachael Meet Our Alumni

Aundrea Tabbs-Smith, Bank Street Graduate School of Education, Childhood Special Education '09

Meet our alumni

For years, I was always turning down leadership opportunities. I didn’t see myself that way—I was an educator, not a leader. I hadn’t matured enough as an individual, and I can see now that I needed those years in the classroom to strengthen and build that muscle before I could lead.

Aundrea Tabbs-Smith - Childhood Special Education '09

Meet Aundrea Meet Our Alumni

Esther Gottesman, Bank Street Graduate School of Education 2018, Childhood General and Special Education

Meet our alumni

What I do now as a public school teacher comes very naturally from the studies I did at Bank Street. We use culturally responsive, place-based learning that includes investigations of the neighborhood and our school, reflecting and responding to the community.

Esther Gottesman - Childhood General and Special Education '18

Meet Esther Meet Our Alumni