Georgetown has a rich tradition of students involved in teaching through coursework, extra-curricular activities (DC Reads, DC Schools Project), and roles as tutors and teaching assistants on campus. The Program in Teaching & Learning (PTL) is a forum for drawing the broad and diverse student interest in teaching issues together with strong academic sponsorship. The new PTL will serve the significant population of students interested in: post baccalaureate employment in teaching, graduate school teaching as well as research, and the social contexts of education and new ways to connect with academic disciplines.

Some major elements of the PTL include:

• Minor in Teaching and Learning earned through a combination of coursework, practicum, and capstone experiences.
• Practicum experience in teaching that provides students with preparation for a variety of professional paths in education and an alternative means to engage deeply and creatively with their academic discipline.
• Seminars, colloquia, and other events, in coordination with other programs (such as the Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching, and Service and the student-led Georgetown Outreach on Learning and Education).
• Campus and curricular resources related to education, including the pedagogies of the disciplines, educational theory, and social justice issues central to educational policy and practice such as key offices and organizations on campus whose work directly involves student leadership in teaching and educational outreach, including work in DC public and parochial schools.

The Minor in Teaching and Learning provides opportunities for students to explore teaching and learning issues through four key principles:

• Focus on teaching and learning in the disciplines supported through departments;
• Focus on the leadership, social justice, and ethical dimensions of education as seen through a wide range of fields including Government, Justice and Peace Studies, Public Policy, Sociology, and Philosophy;
• Emphasis on teaching practicum opportunities, particularly through community-based learning settings in association with DC schools — public, private, and parochial;
• Emphasis on the scholarship of teaching and learning that grounds the professional practice of teaching in a focus on student learning through the assimilation of most recent research on learning and the active examination of learning in one's own classroom.