Bennington's MATSL Program Prepares the Next Generation of Language Teachers
July 26 2010
It’s for K–12 French and Spanish teachers. It takes two years to complete and accepts 15–20 people each year. It’s low-residency: for three weeks each summer, students immerse themselves in classes on the Bennington campus; the rest of the year they complete online coursework from home.And, according to director Carol Meyer, Bennington’s Master of Arts in Teaching a Second Language (MATSL) program ultimately attracts teachers who seek to do one thing: “become better teachers, which for us as a program means they develop their muscles to become good, effective thinkers.”
The goal of the MATSL program—making classrooms better for kids, where they’re not bored but are engaged in thinking—stems from Meyer's own experience as a first-grade student. "I remember being in my classroom. Miss Terani was going over big/bigger/biggest for what felt to me like an enormous amount of time. And she said ‘We’re not going to forget this, are we?’ And out of my mouth came: ‘How could we?’ And she sent me out in the hall.”
The goal of the MATSL program: to make classrooms better for kids, where they're not bored but are engaged in thinking.
In the MATSL program, learning to design experiences that are interesting and challenging for kids is both a science and an art. The science aspect starts with research projects, which students take on for the duration of the program. MATSL trains teachers to approach their practice as researchers and to design instruction based on that research.
Nikki Matheson, MATSL ’07, says, “Great attention was paid by the MATSL faculty to make sure you had a really good research question. It was very guided.”
In pursuit of one of these questions, a MATSL student might plan instruction around it, videotape her class during a lesson, then analyze the footage.
The MATSL program views language itself—
and learning language—as culturally bound.
It’s common for research findings to flow beyond the boundaries of Bennington. Matheson published two pieces in the Vermont Foreign Language Association Newsletter, one on teaching vocabulary through Les Miserables and one through 19th century art. Other graduates have presented their work at national conferences.
Armed with concrete data and a newfound understanding, MATSL students also gain leadership skills and a capacity to build a principled teaching practice—“a true north,” as Meyer describes it. A “true north” is a vision—about teaching, languages, and cultures. Central to developing one’s true north are the “Language and Culture” classes MATSL students take every term—both during the residency and online.
With class sizes of 10 to 20, the MATSL program structure begets a close-knit community of peers and colleagues.
“The way we studied culture,” says Zamor, who teaches French to fifth- through eighth-graders, “had the greatest impact on my approach.” She left the MATSL program feeling that, as a foreign language teacher, she is “poised to be at the forefront of cross-cultural communication.” She designs her lessons for “maximum consideration of culture through literature, film, music, and research on francophone countries. I facilitate the development of students' tolerance for that which is different from them.”
The uniting forces of culture and language can revolutionize lesson plans. Matheson thinks that most materials at 5th and 6th grade proficiency level “remain in the realm of funny animals and fairytales, which is so beneath them.” At Bennington, she and another student tackled Les Miserables to “draw out threads” and create lesson plans “that are actually quite adaptable for a wide range of ages.”
MATSL charges teacher practitioners with designing
“intellectual playgrounds” for their pupils.
With class sizes of 10 to 20, the MATSL program structure begets a close-knit community of peers and colleagues both during the intense summer sessions and online during the school year. While MATSL is not full-immersion, language skills flourish in both formal and informal settings. In fact, Zamor says, her writing proficiency, always a weak point, greatly improved “because the non-residency program was online, and we had to write in French every other day.”
During the residencies, MATSL students are housed on campus according to the language they speak. Meals are taken at language tables with fellow students and language faculty.
Students in the MATSL program develop a grasp of the bigger picture, but also learn how to zero in on the details and apply them to their practice. As Meyer puts it, it’s the notion of “hawk vision and mouse vision, together.” MATSL charges teacher practitioners with designing “intellectual playgrounds” for their future pupils. In turn, MATSL aspires to do the same for its own students.