WGU Master of Arts in Teaching Social Science

[sanantone]

Part of the degree program is a 12-20 week stint as a student teacher. WGU helps place you with a local school. This is almost always an unpaid term, btw, although in a rare instance some schools will hire you while you complete your student teaching (usually these are high needs school districts that have been unable to fill the position any other way). Since it's an all-day 5-day-a-week thing, you can't hold a regular job while you're student teaching either.

It's a standard requirement for teacher licensure programs.

WGU's licensure program is traditional. Like you said, you can't really work while student teaching in a traditional program. Since this website has a lot of adult learners with bills to pay, WGU's teaching programs are not going to be popular here. There is also an expensive fee that comes with traditional student teaching. Not only is the work unpaid, but you're paying the school for the opportunity to student teach. A better option, if you can't afford to do traditional student teaching, is to enter an alternative teacher certification program. The way these work is that you are hired on a provisional license for one academic year. You are the full-time teacher of record, so you're getting a full salary during your internship. The alternative teacher certification program, however, might deduct their program fees in installments from your check. But, this is a good setup because you don't pay the few thousand dollars or so for the alternative teacher certification program until you land a job.