ACAT

Founded in 1964, ACAT was a world-class institute built on the teachings of F.M. Alexander. From 1967 to 2018, ACAT ran the first and most prestigious Teacher Certification Program in the United States, training over 300 individuals, more than a third of the country’s Alexander teachers.

ACAT TRAINING PHILOSOPHY

The American Center for the Alexander Technique was distinguished by its collegial approach to the training process.  The faculty, though diverse in their personal realizations of the Alexander Technique, were dedicated as colleagues to working together in preserving the integrity of the Technique throughout the program.  Our goal was a training that remains open to the inevitable changes characterizing true growth, while conserving the central practice and principles of the Alexander Technique.

The ACAT Teacher Certification Program was a striking example of Jerome Bruner's concept of the spiral curriculum (The Process of Education), where the essentials of the discipline are presented from the outset, and encountered at successively higher levels of awareness, understanding and skill.  More concretely, each Trimester of the TCP was a developmental expansion, as well as an intensive review, of the previous Trimester, from the candidate's use-of-self at the outset, to use-of-self while placing hands on another student, to use-of-self in initiating movement in another, to use-of-self in analyzing another's movement patterns and developing teaching skills, to ultimately a sustained use-of self in teaching the Alexander Technique in a formal lesson situation

History of Course Structure and Schedule

 ACAT began taking in one cohort at a time in 1967, for a two-year cycle, and then another group would be admitted upon the current group's graduation. As the demand for training grew, there were multiple groups going through the training cycle. Originally two years, by 1983, the training was expanded to 7 terms, and by 1987 the course was 9 terms.

Classes met 4 days a week and the graduating class of December 1988 completed a 1200-hour curriculum. The class that graduated in December 1989 attended class 4 days per week for the first year and then 5 days per week for year 2 and 3, as ACAT increased course hours to 1600 at the time the AmSAT (originally NASTAT) was formed and  all graduates of that class were grandfathered in for AmSAT certification upon graduation, even with their shortened first year. Many US teachers who had certified prior to the formation of AmSAT were grandfathered in for membership although their training courses had fewer than 1600 hours.

 Up through December 1988, each class group had their own teachers, and every student in a training class was at the same point in the three-year curriculum. Starting in 1986, some classes were combined to begin a layered learning environment. The class that entered training in January 1987 shared the classroom 3 out of 4, then 4 out of 5 days per week with trainees 1 year ahead for their first year, then 1 year behind for their second year. In third year, they shared class with the third year students who had started in September 1987.

In the early 2000s, an afternoon training schedule was added. As enrollment fluctuated, starting in the mid 2000s, classes were merged into the same group, and the training course schedule shifted to an 8 am start time for one group and a 10:35 start time for the second group. Students of all levels were in both sections.

 In the Fall 2016 Trimester, daytime classes were consolidated to meet 9:00 am to 12:45  Mondays – Thursdays; and an evening/weekend schedule was created that would meet Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday evenings from 5:30 to 9:15 pm and Saturdays from 9:30 am to 1:15 pm, to make training accessible to people working full time. Based on scheduling requests from students on the course, classes were held Tuesday evenings and Saturdays for the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 academic years of the training course.

 Smaller classes and private and semi-private lessons were offered from September 2018 through December 2018 to complete training hours for our final graduates.




 

 





Try Alexander at home with Self Lesson on the Floor – a digital download exclusively available from ACAT featuring the practices of ACAT founder Judith Leibowitz.

Useful Resources About the Alexander Technique