Rate and Review World Learning/SIT Graduate Institute

- Avoid SIT Graduate Institute - - - 3/17/2013 7:40:56 AM
As I read over online commentary and blogs extolling the praise of the MAT Program, I am left wondering if these people attended the same program I did. I found the program to be quite shallow. And this ennui was hardly mitigated by the mounds of busy work and short papers that I have neither seen nor referenced since my time at S.I.T. (nor have the questions of prospective employers come close to creating a need for any of them). Here are some points to consider based on my experience at S.I.T.: Faculty members in this program have had varying degrees of teaching experiences, but I wonder why this isn’t reflected in the course work? It’s their job to prepare students for teaching “in the trenches.” If you aren’t sure what this expression means, I would suggest getting some more teaching experience before applying to any graduate program (especially S.I.T.). Professors should be sharing lessons on how to avoid the pitfalls they have already experienced in teaching. Instead, more than a few of my classmates were ignored and told there wasn’t enough discussion time when they brought up questions related to the nuts-and-bolts of teaching. However, there was plenty of time for activities that contributed very little to teacher development. I guess it didn’t fit in with the S.I.T. paradigm. While I attended the program, all performance assessments were either “pass" or "fail,” which S.I.T. spins as a positive thing. But be mindful of the fact that your future classmates who routinely show up late, miss class and barely contribute to group endeavors will wind up "earning" the same “pass” on their transcripts as the students who stay up very late burning the midnight oil AND valuable time they will never get back. Further, depending on where you apply for work, there's every chance that you will be very hard-pressed to "equate" your Passes and Fails (heaven forbid) with the As,Bs, and Cs of other programs. The foreign language electives were laughable. During my language class, we talked a lot about the target language but almost never in that language. I also heard this complaint from several classmates who studied other languages. When you do your final “portfolio”, you are on your own which is spun, again, as a positive attribute. However, when your assigned professor finally reads your portfolio, you’ll be criticized for doing things incorrectly which are not referenced in the paltry student handbook. You’ll hear things like “other students did it this way” or be asked to make cosmetic, vacuous changes not at all germane to the content under evaluation. If you just happen to have an inordinate amount of discretionary time on your hands, attending to incipit minutiae might be to your liking. However, if you are job-hunting at the same time, those little exercises in cosmetic enhancement will invariably anger you to distraction. Most reputable academic programs assign advisors to final papers or at least have professors available to talk to during the writing of the paper. I attended a rigorous, reputable undergraduate institution that took course evaluations seriously by making them anonymous. S.I.T.’s condescending approach to course evaluations required that people “own their comments” by attaching their names. I found this unprofessional. Even if names were removed before they went to the appropriate professors, it would still be unprofessional. Though I enjoyed spending a year in Vermont and meeting nice people, the M.A.T. Program was neither worth the tuition nor the underwhelming and non-epiphanic curriculum. In hindsight, I can't but wonder how the program earned its accreditation. I recommend perusing the Internet for much cheaper AND more professionally relevant TESOL graduate programs.