Teaching

Great teachers are great students: they love working with words and numbers, microscopes and paintbrushes.

For them, teaching is the attempt to inspire the same kind of curiosity, to help their students discover the power to pursue a passion of their own. The education of great teachers must be every bit as challenging and exciting as an historian’s or a mathematician’s or a novelist’s. These are the principles that inform Bennington’s Center for Creative Teaching (CCT), which offers both a Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program and accelerated Bachelor of Arts/Master of Arts in Teaching (BA/MAT) program.

In the accelerated BA/MAT program, you take teaching seminars alongside your studies in other areas. Graduates of the program earn a MAT degree and certification to teach in Vermont. Reciprocity exists for all states except Iowa and Minnesota; however, the specific requirements of each state must be met before licensure can be earned. Most of the undergraduate teaching seminars include a fieldwork component, which gives you the chance to test out in community schools the ideas you’ve developed in class. You will also teach and explore your other interests through the yearly Field Work Term, Bennington’s winter internship period.

The CCT works closely with the College’s innovative, community-based Quantum Leap program for at-risk elementary, middle, and high school students.