TESOL NEWS
Darkest Challenges Breed Brightest Opportunities
Every challenge has in it the seeds of opportunity. To plant these seeds this Spring Quarter 2020, TESOL graduate students in ENG 592: TESOL Practicum successfully designed and delivered online ESL/EFL courses.
Over the years, the Department of English has collaborated with CWU’s UESL program to schedule practica, but due to the coronavirus pandemic, the UESL enrollment decreased dramatically and so limited practicum students’ opportunities to only class observations. At the core of our TESOL training is helping candidates prepare for classroom teaching. To ensure that our future teacher candidates were well trained, TESOL faculty and graduate students turned to international contacts and recruited up to 13 young English learners in China and 4 young English learners in Saudi Arabia, totaling 17 with an age range of 6 through 15 and with beginner, intermediate-low, and intermediate proficiency levels. We divided them into four classes—beginner (one class), intermediate-low (two classes), and intermediate (one class). We trained ourselves to use Zoom in the shortest time possible and used it as our teaching platform along with Canvas for posting teaching materials, assignments, etc. Given that we were short of textbooks for this special group of English learners, TESOL faculty developed the first five lessons as guidelines for our graduate students to design their own teaching materials for their young learners’ proficiency levels. We also selected and rewrote a few short fairytales by Andersen and Brothers Grimm for use. We met every Tuesday on Zoom to discuss a range of issues related to remote teaching, including typical behaviors of second language students at various proficiency levels, materials development, lesson-plan writing, virtual-class management, time management, virtual-class dynamics, contingency preparation, technical issues, student attendance, teaching evaluations, etc. Aside from labor-intensive coordination of weekly classes across three cultures and three time zones, starting from the second week of the quarter, we found our practicum students already beginning teaching their own assigned students. They have since been teaching every Friday morning (one class for Arabic learners) and every Friday evening (three classes for Chinese learners). As first-time virtual teachers, every trainee is excited about these teaching opportunities. We have also set up a two-way evaluation system. We received the students’ parents’ feedback about our teaching (some parents joined our classes), and we sent our evaluations of student performance to every student in about two hours after each class. The parents spoke highly of our teaching, praising our teaching as professional and asking if we would continue after this quarter.
The darkest challenges of COVID-19 have turned out to generate the brightest opportunities, which our practicum students--now confident front-line virtual teachers--are cherishing. Below are what our practicum students, listed alphabetically based on their last names, say about their valuable training and teaching experiences this quarter.
Rebecca Fisher: “Being an online educator has changed my opinion about online education. At first, I thought it was just the cheaper and easier alternative. Now, I am seeing how hard my students work. I have also gained a lot of insight on developing appropriate teaching material for my young students. Every week, I design an English lesson to teach to students 7,000 miles away in China. This is my first time having to design lessons using only PowerPoint and Zoom. Although I cannot see them literally in person, I can still see their faces light up when they learn with me. I can still watch my students improve. I can still interact with my students and ask them questions about their daily lives. This practicum has given me a great opportunity for my future career.”
Mousa Khuwayjah: “Teaching can be a challenge sometimes. However, being a student in the TESOL program has taught me the importance of developing teaching materials to support students’ effective learning. Taking the practicum course is a great experience because it helps me to learn about my future career and students. I am thankful for this beneficial opportunity of learning and teaching."
Kinzee McDanald: “This quarter has been a challenge all around, but the practicum has been the most challenging part. It has also been the most rewarding. The newly added requirement to teach international students online has been a true test of my competence and perseverance. I have gained invaluable experience in creating and carrying out lessons in an online platform. The pandemic that has altered society actually led to a beneficial learning opportunity that we would not have had in the program otherwise. This new element should continue to be implemented in the course for future TESOL students. Thanks to my practicum, I feel much more confident in my abilities to teach and to put what I have learned to practice.”
CWU ONLINE ENGLISH PROGRAM NAMED ONE OF THE BEST IN THE NATION.
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