The School of Education welcomed 16 new graduate students into the revised M.Ed. program on Monday, June 14.
The newly structured Master of Education Program at Elon welcomed a new cohort of 16 students to campus on Monday, June 14. The part-time program was revised to place an emphasis on innovation in education and is designed for teachers who are graduates of accredited institutions and initially licensed to teach.
The new cohort represents seven North Carolina school districts, one out-of-state district, one international district, four Latin American countries, one Asian country and includes two Elon undergraduate alumni. These new graduate students currently teach in Alamance-Burlington, Chapel Hill-Carrboro, Dare, Harnett, New Hanover, Rockingham and Wake school systems in North Carolina, Prince William County Public Schools in Virginia and an international school in Israel.
Members of the cohort bring with them a wealth of diverse experiences and backgrounds. They teach in elementary schools, charter schools, middle schools, high schools and international baccalaureate programs. Some have taught for as little as two years and others as many as 25 years.
Four graduate students recently completed Elon’s Academically/Intellectually Gifted (AIG) Education add-on program through our partnership with Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. Nine international students enrolled in the new program are teaching in the United States for three years as part of the Participate Learning (formerly Participate) and they will each share teaching experiences from their native countries.
Corey Waters, who completed the AIG add-on program and is a ninth-grade world history teacher at Chapel Hill High School, says, “the new M.Ed. program sparks my interests of wanting to address new approaches within my teaching and advocacy work. I am excited to learn about the research, theories, models of innovation and practices which will center on the need for systemic change, in how we approach and view education within our diverse learning communities.”
The new M.Ed. program has been designed to disrupt practitioners’ traditional concepts of schooling and move teachers toward more progressive visions and praxis. The program has both face-to-face and online/hybrid courses. The program involves two courses taught on campus each summer, three online courses in first academic year, and four online courses in the second academic year.
Candidates progress through the program as a cohort. The M.Ed. Program will continue its current practice of offering candidates the option to live on campus during summer courses as this helps to foster the development of learning communities.
Graduate candidates are:
- Introduced to a range of progressive student-centered pedagogies such as project-based learning and place-based education
- Asked to reimagine education within a constructivist framework, allowing for equitable learning opportunities that are respectful and responsive of students’ backgrounds, and
- Offered opportunities to experiment in their own practice with innovative pedagogies.
Tatiana Rudiander Conte has been teaching for 18 years, with the last two in the United States, and is excited to start the Elon M.Ed. Program. “It will be great to interact with teachers from different parts of the world and to share and exchange our experiences, goals, concerns, and challenges,” Conte said.
In addition, each M.Ed. student is assigned to a faculty adviser who works closely with students as they advance through the program. Advisers and other faculty guide students as they conduct their action-based research projects and develop their graduate portfolios.
For more information about our M.Ed. program, please visit www.elon.edu/med.