By Jordan Beach
Teachers should feel confident educating young minds, and with the graduate degrees offered by Reinhardt University’s Price School of Education (PSOE), educators can feel well prepared as they lead their own classrooms.
Whether starting a new career or building on a current one, Reinhardt offers degrees for any situation. The Master in Elementary Education is built for those with a bachelor’s degree in education, and the Master of Arts in Teaching gives those with a different career the opportunity to become a classroom teacher. The MAT now offers a special track specifically for paraprofessionals.
Master in Elementary Education
Reinhardt’s M.Ed. is an 18-month program with courses on the main campus in Waleska and in Woodstock that allows teachers to continue their career while expanding their abilities to take on new challenges. It is designed for certified Early Childhood Education (P-5) professionals who completed one year of full-time classroom experience and want to earn a master’s degree in a professional learning community. Students take one face-to-face class and one online class per eight weeks in a cohort model, where students take all 11 required courses together.
The M.Ed. program is more than convenient: its goal is to transform professional educators into distinguished responsive classroom teachers, action researchers and instructional leaders. While courses focus on topics such as responsive teaching and classroom action research, the program also develops teachers to become leaders who promote data-driven decisions for positive impact and school improvements on academic achievement for all students.
For program questions, contact program coordinator Karen B. Hawley at 770.720.5649 or KBH1@Reinhardt.edu.
Master of Arts in Teaching
For professionals wanting to shift their focus to become a teacher and share their wealth of knowledge, the Master of Arts in Teaching is a four-semester program that offers a smooth transition from one career to the next. The program’s courses meet twice a week at night, so students don’t need to put their life on hold to change careers. The first three semesters include coursework and the final semester completes the degree with Clinical Residency, also known as student teaching, to prepare teachers for their own classrooms and can be done with current employment with administration approval.
The MAT program will now offer a new track for paraprofessionals furthering their education, one that works around teachers’ schedules and takes just 14 months, a full year of courses with a semester of summer residential intensives
“We are providing the opportunity to paraprofessionals with a four-year degree who have at least a year of experience because we feel they have enough background knowledge to enter the program and progress at an accelerated pace,” said Dr. Nancy Marsh, Dean of the Price School of Education.
For program questions, contact program coordinator Dr. Lynda Chisholm at 770.720.5645 or LGC@Reinhardt.edu.
For admission questions regarding either program, please contact the Office of Professional Studies and Graduate Admissions at 770.720. 9191 or gradadmissions@Reinhardt.edu.
