Courses & Schedules

This course focuses on the ways in which educators, politicians, and the public view the state of American schools. Broad philosophies of education guide an analysis of schools, which include historical lenses as well as the current literature on classroom reforms. This course contrasts central issues of schooling as seen from the "outside" political domain and the "inside" experience of students. In particular, the course addresses how issues of race and social class as well as economic inequality surround current debates over the best way to improve schools in the 21st century. This course is intended both for prospective teachers and for students interested in examining critically the policies that shape one of the key institutions in American society. Required for the Education Studies minor and for admission to the MAT program.

The central topic of this course is the ways teachers view learning, instruction, classroom organization, and motivation. This course takes a micro-analytical approach focusing on classroom interactions and how a teacher plans for a range of student interests, experiences, strengths, and needs. Students in the course consider 1) how the teacher inquiry cycle of planning, teaching, and reflecting supports teacher identity development and improves instruction, and 2) how the interactions between teachers and students, and amongst students, are located at the intersections of issues of knowledge, identity, and power.

This school-based field experience accompanies the elementary and secondary curriculum and instruction courses. MAT students observe and participate in elementary and/or secondary classroom teaching and learning experiences.

This seminar involves weekly meetings in which students examine a range of issues emanating from school-based experiences. In addition, the course fulfills specific Washington Administrative Code (WAC) requirements for teacher preparation. Students hear selected speakers on professional topics related to sexual harassment, appropriate relationships and touch in school, school contract law, IEP/504 students, and child neglect/abuse.

In this course students engage in reflective cycles of teaching practice. Using their teaching internship as a source of inquiry, students make their practice public, share teaching issues, and problem-solve through collegial dialogue. Participants critically reflect on curriculum, student learning, and student identities by posing questions, surfacing assumptions, reframing issues, and developing action steps to transform their teaching. Students engage with critical frameworks to inform culturally responsive and anti-racist teaching, identifying and examining their own identities, biases, and social locations. As a signature assessment, students draw upon video of their teaching to deepen their understanding of classrooms and to articulate their engagement with standards. To prepare for job searches and interviews, students engage with school district administrators and human resource personnel. This course is taken in conjunction with EDUC 622, Student Teaching.

This instructional methods course provides an opportunity to explore issues and strategies related to current models and trends in literacy teaching and learning. Creating inclusive learning communities characterized by equity, access and social justice requires the continued development of all students’ capacities to use language and construct meaning through print. A foundational assumption of this course is that literacy is not a ’subject’ but a tool for social, cultural, and academic engagement. In and out of the classroom, children engage with their world through literacy practices of reading, writing, speaking, and listening. In alignment with this principle, literacy/language arts is integrated with social studies. To this aim we will use literacy to study individuals, communities, systems, and their interactions across time and place, in a way that prepares young people for local, national, and global civic life. The goal is to begin to build a knowledge base and internalize habits of mind that are essential for a successful beginning teacher and for continuous improvement and growth.

This 1-unit course is designed to support your professional development and growth as a reflective teacher in secondary content area classrooms. It focuses on the many variables that impact teaching and learning and invites students to consider a range of questions, stances, assumptions, practices, and tensions that inform teaching and learning in secondary schools. Students learn important general methods related to teaching in content areas with adolescents - including notions of inquiry, equity based instruction, differentiation, grouping, and assessment. Students create and share concrete lesson plans and develop a final unit plan to end the term. This work is informed by fall classroom-based placements, which allow teacher candidates to engage with situated materials, artifacts, and other resources to build one’s teacher identity and to ground theory and practice.

This course aims to prepare secondary teacher candidates to better understand adolescent experiences within and beyond school, using a variety of critical lenses and perspectives. The course emphasizes engagement with diverse student communities, and seeks to interrogate common assumptions surrounding student abilities, motivations, and literacies. Participants work with adolescents throughout the term, engage readings, complete case studies, and work toward curriculum and instruction that more consciously includes every learner.

This course provides students the opportunity to assume the role of an elementary/secondary teacher for a 15-week period during the Spring semester. Students work cooperatively with a selected mentor teacher, with supervisory support from the University. Pass/fail only.

The central work of this course is to center race as a lens for understanding education and miseducation in American schooling. Students engage the ongoing process of confronting and unlearning socialized assumptions about race and how these manifest in classrooms and in their own racialized identities. Students reflect on classroom teaching and learning experiences to develop and apply strategies and action steps that promote racial equity in learning contexts, engaging the following questions: How do I define my racialized identity? What does it mean to name and unlearn socialized assumptions, beliefs, and practices about race? How does individual, interpersonal, and systemic racism manifest in classrooms and schools?

This masters project seminar uses reflective analysis to reconsider pedagogical dilemmas emerging from student teaching. In professional collaboration, students explore questions relating to culturally responsive teaching: What does it mean to be a culturally responsive and antiracist practitioner? How do my experiences and intersectional identities impact my cultural responsiveness? What actions can I take to interrogate my biases and social location and to contribute collaboratively to the ongoing work of equity? As a result of their exploration, students develop projects and consider implications and action steps for future practice.