Welcome to Master of Arts in Teaching English

Welcome

The Department of Language and Literature of Clayton State University is excited to offer a new degree program, the Master of Arts in Teaching English. We welcome prospective educators to this site and invite future teacher candidates to visit our beautiful campus in Morrow, Georgia.

About the Program

The Master of Arts in Teaching English with secondary education concentration is designed for individuals who hold a bachelor’s degree in English or a related area and/or have a provisional teaching certificate in the discipline. This initial certification program will prepare interested persons to receive a master’s degree and provide them the opportunity to become certified to teach secondary English. The program will consist of English content and methods courses, professional studies classes, and field-based clinical experiences. Most content and professional education courses will emphasize use of technology and action research with pupils in diverse school settings. Upon completion of the program, graduates will be awarded the M.A.T. degree and the opportunity for teacher certification in grades 6-12 English. This program will offer evening courses for a beginning cohort of 30 full-time candidates with full-time student teaching during the spring semester. Individuals who are teaching with a provisional certificate in a public school system will be given full-time student teaching status.

The curriculum will be delivered over four semesters beginning with Summer I, followed by fall and spring semesters, and ending with Summer II. The M.A.T. program is designed to provide courses and field experiences to support candidates’ educational foundation theory and knowledge during the first summer with content and pedagogical knowledge, skills, and dispositions with practica and internship experiences provided during the fall and spring semesters. The last summer session will consist of completing an action research project and finishing content courses. While faculty in the Department of Language and Literature will teach the English content and methods courses, faculty from the Department of Teacher Education will teach the professional education courses and supervise the clinical and internship experiences along with public school mentor teachers. Our partnership school districts will serve as collaborative sites for field experiences and internships.

Program Goals

This degree offers students opportunities to:

• develop or hone pedagogical skills for teaching English in a high school or college setting;
• create meaningful connections between subject matter and teaching methods through practice and reflection of the effects on student learning;
• discover new approaches and materials to reach diverse learners through Clayton State University’s unique resources; and
• study literature and composition through eighteen hours of intensive graduate coursework in the discipline.

Teacher Education Conceptual Framework

The Master of Arts in Teaching with concentration in Secondary English will embrace the tenets of our conceptual framework. The theme of Clayton State University’s Teacher Education Conceptual Framework is to prepare teacher candidates to become “collaborative, reflective professional educators who are competent, caring and committed individuals.” In particular, program graduates should be able to:

1. diagnose student needs;
2. plan for student learning;
3. facilitate student learning;
4. demonstrate appropriate content knowledge;
5. foster student well-being to promote learning; and
6. assume the role of professional teacher.