The Bard College Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Program is a rigorous graduate teacher education program deeply embedded in communities in California and New York State. Part of the MAT Program’s work is to support local teachers, create professional development opportunities, and train creative new educators. By partnering with the Institute for Writing and Thinking, both organizations are able to advance their shared goals of supporting innovative teaching by giving teachers the opportunity to experience writing as a catalyst for learning across the disciplines, and learn new ways to incorporate writing into their curricula and pedagogy. These workshops are developed jointly by the MAT Program and IWT, and respond to the needs and interests of local teachers in the communities where the MAT Program has campuses. In the 2012­2013 school year, the MAT Program and IWT will offer new workshops in California and New York, provide opportunities for preservice teachers and their mentors to attend IWT workshops together, and provide a pathway for current in-service public school teachers to become faculty associates of the Institute.

In California, IWT workshops take place on the Delano campus of the Bard MAT Program at Paramount Bard Academy, a charter school for students from communities in California’s Central Valley. In New York City, IWT workshops take place in the schools working in partnership with the Bard MAT Program in New York City. At both of these sites, the workshops offered are open to all public school teachers working in the region.