Overview
Preparing Teachers
The MAT Program focuses on teaching as a clinical profession, and on the teacher as a professional. Skilled in applying their knowledge of learning to the different needs of individual learners, and possessing a high level of competence in their subject areas, MAT graduates are prepared to teach and to lead.
Research indicates that teachers tend to teach in the same way they were taught. In the MAT Program, students participate firsthand in a different educational model and are challenged to rethink their assumptions about teaching and learning. They are immersed in an approach to learning that recognizes the role of language in the development of thinking. In teaching MAT students to treat writing as an educational technology that facilitates individual learning in the classroom, the program benefits from its close association with Bard's Institute for Writing and Thinking, a nationally recognized program of workshops for teachers at all levels.
MAT students continue their undergraduate degree studies by taking six graduate-level courses in their elected discipline. This process culminates in a final research project that must demonstrate a high level of understanding within the field. Concurrently, MAT students take six graduate-level courses in education, covering a wide range of issues, ideas, and practices. These courses, which concentrate on adolescent education, are thematically designed to answer essential questions about teaching and learning. For example, curriculum design and cognitive psychology are studied by posing questions about what gets taught, how it is taught, and why it is taught. Courses are framed by practice-based research. Students are required to make relevant connections between their educational studies and the work of the public schools. Academic advising takes place in various contexts: MAT students meet regularly with MAT faculty members and with master teachers from participating public schools, and work closely with their MAT faculty advisers.
As teaching interns, MAT students work closely with mentor teachers in Hudson Valley or New York City public school classrooms from September through June. They design and teach lessons and units, assess student understanding, and modify practices to adapt to their students' needs in the context of educational priorities. Throughout each phase of their teaching experience, MAT students engage in the kind of reflective practice that is essential to teaching effectively and growing professionally. The mentor teachers and MAT students participate in guided writing seminars in which they explore common educational questions collaboratively. Classroom research projects, conducted by mentor teachers and MAT student apprentices, are planned during the summer and fall quarters and carried out in the winter and spring quarters.
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