The Master of Arts in Teaching program is designed for working educators to use their professional positions as laboratories for learning and experimenting with different models of planning, teaching and assessment in order to advance toward becoming master teachers. Students receive fieldwork credit for their professional work. Typically, MAT students are full-time working professionals in day schools, although educators in other settings are welcome to apply. AJU assigns a professional mentor to each graduate student to visit them in their fieldwork site and provide feedback and guidance on their teaching.
The MAT program has adopted a new 4-semester curriculum map which includes 41 credits. MAT courses meet Tuesday evenings from 4:30-9:45, and one Sunday afternoon a month. This schedule enables full-time working teachers to enroll as “full-time” students (e.g. 9 credits a semester) on a schedule that is built around their professional lives and can be completed in two academic years. The cohort experience is a key feature of the learning, giving working professionals the opportunity to reflect and grow with colleagues and faculty on a weekly basis.
The new curriculum is designed to enrich the professional lives of our students, wherever they are serving as educators. Anchored by leading theories of teaching and learning, administration and leadership, there are opportunities within the courses to investigate and deepen expertise in individualized subject matter and with attention to different learning populations. Understanding that the landscape of professional teaching is broad and diverse, the curriculum aims to support the professional growth of its students no matter their entry point, be it as novice teachers, informal educators seeking to formalize their practice, rabbis and content specialists preparing to teach new populations, and veteran teachers seeking formal pedagogic training. The diverse backgrounds and expertise of our graduate students contributes to the rich learning landscape of our coursework.
Our faculty are renowned for their mentorship, scholarship, teaching and field expertise. They are dedicated to the individual development of each of our graduate students. The small size of each cohort affords each student the opportunity to be known by their faculty.