• encouraging self-objective, discerning professionals who investigate different paths to learning,
• promoting an environment of mutual respect and support,
• and celebrating intellectual rigor and the development of a personal pedagogy.

• Who am I as a teacher?
• What is the nature of this community?
• What are its schools and classrooms like?
• Who are these students and what does school mean to them?
• What and how should I teach?
• How do I know if I am achieving the ends sought?

The coursework for the MAC program will be split into four primary areas.  One of these will be a combination of two courses taught by Prof. Loren (Biff) Barritt within the School of Education, which will cover some of the requirements of the University’s Master’s Program in Education.  The remaining element of this program will be a combination of the remaining certification coursework and a reflective seminar focusing on your experiences and providing an interdisciplinary approach to the core content of the teacher education program.  In addition, you will have a course specific to methods of instruction for your major content discipline, and finally, cognate courses to fulfill Rackham requirements. 

Each of you has been assigned to a secondary teacher either in Ann Arbor or Saline, who will act as your mentor for the following year.  Beginning in the fall, you will be in a high school or middle school classroom two days a week, initially as an observer, but soon thereafter as a participant, starting to share in some of the teacher’s duties.  The nature of these activities and the rate of your integration into teacher roles will vary from classroom to classroom.  You will also use some time during this semester to observe other classrooms and schools to gain a breadth of understanding about the issues of pedagogy faced by teachers in different environments.  By the start of the second semester, when you begin attending school full time, your teaching responsibilities are likely to include many of the roles performed by a regular classroom teacher for some, if not all, of the classes. 

During the year, we will be investigating practice by observing, interviewing, and reading.  Together, we will take a fascinating journey into the diverse and wonderful worlds of students learning, teachers teaching, and parents worrying.  In other words, we will be studying the politics of educational practice.  And since practice is always imperfect – never mind what the old saying asserts --  we will have plenty of opportunity to think again and again about these situations and how we can do things better next time.  Teaching is a life-long journey.  Our goal this year is to make you a more than competent traveler on this difficult but endlessly interesting path.  We want you to become a contributing member to the profession’s discussion of how teachers should teach, students can be helped to learn and schools can be improved.  Be forewarned: most of the interesting questions we will be examining have more than one answer.