STANDARD10Leadership and Collaboration The teacher seeks appropriate leadership roles and opportunities to take responsibility for student learning, to collaborate with learners, families, colleagues, other school professionals, and community members to ensure learner growth, and to advance the profession.
Name of artifact: Letter of appreciation from civic ESL class for adults, Teacher notes for lesson plans TESOL/INTSAC standards addressed: Rationale: During the spring semester of 2016 I took FL 694 Practicum in Second or Foreign Languages. In addition to the high school and elementary school classes with the public school system I wanted to observe some civic groups offering conversational English to non-native speaking adults. To my surprise, in spite of there being a large number of immigrants in the local area there are not very many courses offered to adults that need help with English free of charge. There is a fully developed program at the local University of Memphis that I observed also but these students are enrolled in the college. I observed three classes at Germantown Baptist Church which offers free adult ESL classes. These observations I used for my practicum experience. At the end of the spring semester the director asked me if I would be interested in teaching the June and July summer session. I previously told her I was working on my Masters in teaching languages with an ESL emphasis. I accepted and taught the 8 week summer course of low intermediate students during June and July of 2016. I am using my notes of my lessons that I taught as well as a letter of appreciation as the artifacts for this Standard 10. I wrote down what I was going to teach each week which I also reviewed each week so I could scaffold the lessons. The purpose of the classes is to help adults become functional in English to be able to live and work here where they live. I always knew that beyond high school unless an adult is enrolled in college there are hardly any classes for the adult ESL learner. It is important for them to learn conversational English because they live and work here. They need to survive in their adopted community. Each day they drive, shop, and have to function in their community in which they live. I believe the community needs to offer more classes such as this one. I learned, during my search to observe civic classes that there was only one group that was funded through the public schools that was closed. There is a huge need but no interest attached to funding these programs. This is why I believe the churches are the biggest outreach in this area of need. The children of these parents and grandparents go to school and have ESL/ELL classes. These parents are working or at home and have a need to understand English.
Name of artifact: Letter of appreciation for being a conversation partner TESOL/INTSAC standards addressed: Rationale: During the spring semester of 2016, while I was taking FL694-Practicum in Second or Foreign Languages, I observed ESL teachers as part of the requirements for the course. My main interest is in upper level and adult classes so I was able to observe teachers at the University of Memphis, here in Memphis, Tennessee. I was able to observe the processes and nature of the foreign language classroom and ESL classroom since I was not teaching. There is currently a program in place for teachers to observe so it made it easy for me to schedule observations. While I was observing I met Judy Boggin, who is one of the teachers at the Intensive English for Internationals or IEI Program. She contacted me about a lady she was teaching privately and asked me to be a conversation partner. Someone who has worked with ESL students and studied about how conversation improves language acquisition is a good resource, like me. I decided to help her and she offered to help this be part of my portfolio. I learned about input, interaction and output in this course as well as other courses I have taken in the MATL program. Swain (1985, 1995) values input as necessary for language to occur but also states learners need opportunities for output. I am still a conversation partner with Kelly Smith which was arranged for me by her private tutor, Judith Boggin. Judy is a teacher at the University of Memphis in the Intensive English for Internationals but Kelly is not a college student and would not typically locate someone to have specific, guided conversations with to be able to practice English. I helped Kelly in the spring and summer of 2016 and when her in-laws return to Colombia I will resume. My artifact is a letter about my involvement and Kelly has made progress. While I was a conversation partner I helped Kelly by making small topical conversations, such as, having my student discuss her family. I allowed her to look up and I actually spelled words for her on her translator. Cognitive learning of a language is not enough and it must also be used in social interaction, which is the view of the textbook author (Cazden, 2001). One of my favorite sessions was when we discussed the 4th of July holiday and fun summer activities. There was a lot of vocabulary such as Water Park, fireworks, amusement parks, etc. Even in Vygotsky’s view the learner can do more with others than they can alone. In the In the chapter of sociocultural theory the learner has actual developmental level, or what the learner can do without help and potential developmental level, or what the learner can do with more capable others. The conversational partner program helped me realize that conversation is/should be an essential element in the classroom too. Output is a learning experience as well as cognitive learning. References
Cazden, C. (2001). Classroom discourse: The language of teaching and learning. (2nd ed.). Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH.