An hour is a long time... or is it?

 First Full Lesson Plan

At this point in the semester, Professor Kolcun invited me to teach an entire block of lesson to the beginner students. At this point in the semester, we've spent a lot of time going over introductions, and personal hobbies and job; a whole lot time time reviewing restaurants and food. Karen was hoping to guide the last few weeks of the semester into the relm of work, and getting more in depth conversation describing work and their daily schedules at work. She offered me free reign of all the materials in the back of the room, some picture books and whatnot. Another thing she had mentioned frequently was how she wished she was better with technology for the sake of the students.

Incorperating Everything

I decided I would take a tech approach to the class. I pulled in some of my favorite language learning web-tools, FluentU and ESL Video. Both are awesome, but FluentU was designed as an any-language tool, while ESL Video is as English-centric as the name sounds. Also FluentU sets up gamification with a point system, and daily and monthly goals. One thing I definitely didn't want was to run out of material and be forced to ad hoc the lesson plan, which had happened in my previous week. So I overplanned by selecting multiple videos with an accompanying activity from each website, and set them in an order that would make sense. I had 30 minutes to work with, but I had no idea how long we could work with each video, and I selected 2 total with a 3rd on backup. I didn't need the backup. Then I would work on a personal activity to incorperate writing into the lesson plan.

Class

I first opened ESL Video and opened a beginner's video which revolved around a girl who is studying English. She talked about waking up and going to class, and work. and then eventually to bed. There were accompanying multiple choice questions about the story that we answered as a class after the 2 minute video. I had the students write down the website for personal use if they were interested. Then we did the same thing with another video from FluentU. It was another video documenting the main character's day. FluentU's post video questions were more vocabulary-based, so we answered some together as well, and wrote down the website for student use. Both were written on the board above the plan of the day (plan of the day shown below). 

We then turned off the monitor and had small conversations as a group about everyone's jobs and how they get around. I told them my daily schedule. I then quickly wrote it down on the board in short sentences. I then tasked them with writing down their day in the same fashion as the video and my example on the board. I walked around and helped out as needed, but it was a mostly individual assignment. After 10 minutes each student came to the front and told us about their normal day. Mission accomplished.

When we completed these activities I had taken up 45 minutes, and Karen asked me to teach for the next 15 minutes, until their next break. I had a choice to either pull up another video, or to ad hoc with what we had been working on throughout the week. I decided with the latter since it flowed so easily. We had flashcards on the board with words like 'usually' 'sometimes' 'rarely' 'never'. And I made small talk about methods of transportation and activities the students enjoy like fishing and shopping. So I prodded and prompted them to use the flashcards to tell me about how often they do these activities. Then we took turns writing them on the board with the help of the class and the flashcards. At this point my hour was up and we went on break. Go team.

It was a great success and I'm glad the students and Karen seemed to enjoy it, and that I was able to encorperate things outside of my lesson plan naturally and without hiccup. 

Also below is the lesson plan I had created for the period of instruction.

On My Own

Having spent a week or so observing various classes, I have noticed a trend across all classes. There is simply no curriculum. The standards are implemented by the state, and that is attendance rosters, online testing throughout the year, and daily plan provided on the board at the start of the class. Beyond that it's entirely up to the teachers individually. Now there are definitely pros and cons to this. Each teacher is allowed to create the class they want, without top-down interference. The freedom can be used to stay flexible with students, and work on the fly based on the atmosphere and personalities of the classroom. There are other issues that arise though. The two main issues I notice are materials and continuity.

Materials

Each instructor comes with their own supplies, and whatever materials they can utilize from the university. A lot of the university materials are slightly outdated, but quite usable nonetheless. However there are at least one major flaw in almost ALL materials: appropriate level material. Beginners texts used have large gaps in knowledge, and are required to have a lot of supplementation at the teacher's discretion. Intermediate students can understand more, but there is a big gap for intermediate language learners across most second languages. There's a lot of material that is too easy, and a lot of material too difficult. I think graded readers would be a great way to bridge the gap for the school, and might help all teachers of all levels.

Continuity

When there are few guidelines on individual classes, the students will find a lot of knowledge gaps from class to class. I'm sure this is common in almost any community language program, and it certainly is here. I had a discussion with the beginners instructor about students being uncomfortable progressing. A few of Professor Kolcun's students expressed discomfort in the next level of class despite passing their state sponsored test that shows they're ready for the next level. I'm very curious to see how this topic progresses into the next semester, which is approaching rapidly.

First Class

The night prior to class this week Dr. Britton asked if I would be able to prepare a short lesson (any duration of my choosing) discussing parts of speech for her intermediate class. We were simply doing an end of semester wrap up on using adverbs and adjectives in addition to the basic parts of speech they learned in beginner's class (hopefully). I sat for a bit to ponder what I would teach? I'm a big fan of input based classes, using videos, audio samples, and extended reading (Steven Krashen fan here) to improve language acquisition in a +1 fashion. Fortunately this intermediate class follows an input based approach with learning checks after reading and listening (a lot of video and reading based lessons from various sources). Then I wondered where I would pull my resources from? Would I make a lesson from scratch or something? No that wouldn't be time efficient since I needed to teach it in 12 hours and I don't own a printer at home. I decided to make use of materials the class is already comfortable with. I pulled the Easy English News that are used in the classes. I decided on using a short article on a cheese catching event in England as a base. This allows that +1 zone of development, since it's not new material, simple a new article on a level they already work with. We read it out loud taking turns as a class. Then I had students underline adverbs and adjectives from the article. We wrote them on the board, and made new sentences with them. After that I pulled a youtube video up with the exact interview used in the article. Then we read it again for understanding. There were definitely a few awkward moments, but the lesson went through without any major hiccups. Being in front of a class for ESL is definitely different than my last classroom environment (middle school band), and I remembered why I used to always have several backup activities because I found myself freestyling by the end, and it went alright, but not as smooth as the first part of the activity. Good lessons learned.

P.S. The exact article was used the next day in a different intermediate class. It was nice to see how that teacher implemented the same lesson plan, and the continuity piece across classrooms.

*Below image is example of this paper*

Next Step

 At this point I've now observed more intermediate classes as well as going to my first beginner's class. I will begin with that experience and then go back to the intermediate class as well as a few other important tidbits.

Beginner:

-The beginners course with Professor Karen Kolcun is nearing the end of its semester. The students have spent an entire semester working on their skills. About 30% of their original students remain, which I am told is about average in this setting. With adult students, life gets in the way, and their biggest hope for each student is just see them all regularly. Students are praised for attendence more than anything, and it's clear to see how much more advanced the most regular students are when compaired to students that have less than perfect attendance. There is no love lost here though, as Karen hugs students that haven't been around lately and thanks them for coming. It's definitely a family environment in this class, and I think that's a good thing for the group because the comraderie helps them keep coming. Most of the class is Spanish speakers from various countries and one student is from Bulgaria. At this point in the semester most of the regular students have scored high enough in testing to move into the next level at the start of the next semester. In between the lesson Professor Kolcun and I discuss all of these issues and how it was a struggle for her when she started. She states that she was very close to quitting during her first semester and I can understand why. She is a retired 3rd grade teacher that decided teaching night classes would be a good hobby to make some extra money, and she was imediately in charge of 30 students with very little or no English. Her ability to stay flexible and motivated certainly comes as a shining light to a future educator that doesn't know if they will be up to the task. I've heard horror stories of teachers changing their careers within the first few years of teaching, and English 101 seems quite daunting. The class had spent most of the semester with basic communication with a large focus on food and restaurants. The group had made a quick trip to buy pizza and work on using English in public spaces, and was working on another similar trip to end the semester. I am impressed with Karen's ability to find the answer with large gaps in language. She doesn't get discouraged and the students all ehlp each other find the answers to questions in class. Most of Karen's classes are with projectors, white boards, and books, which is definitely a different method from Dr. Britton's so it's good to see two different ways to work a classroom.

Intermediate:

-I am continually impressed with Dr. Britton's never-ending list of one-off lesson plans that she lays out in an organized fashion to teach language skills. We discussed how she sets long terms language goals for the class, and selects things from memory that will get the class there. I asked about setting up structured curriculum. She mentioned that fall semesters work the best for a structured curriculum for the first half of the semester before people stop showing up, but by summer semester, the goal is to just keep feeding the students input through reading, writing, and conversing. ost of the students in intermediate have an uncomfortable ability to have natural conversations, so we're getting students repetition at this point, as many students are very close to testing out of the program entirely. Some students were already fully matriculated into the school working towards their associated degree. 

TidBits:

-I have been working with the intermediate class and Cindy has been giving me alone time to tutor students on the material presented in class. First it was one-on-one with more advanced students, and now I have spent time leading group work while she relaxes and supervises if needed from her desk. 

-It was fortunate that there is one Japanese student (JS) in Cindy's class that I have started observing in the class. I had mentioned my goal to teach English in Japan and Cindy has intentionally partnered me up with (JS) time to time to spend time with my target audience. I noticed my language skills have helped bridge any gaps the student might have and it makes teaching English slightly easier understanding the other side of the language balance, as compaired to mentoring students with an L1 I do not understand. 

-I have been asked several times if I would be taking a postition at the school when my observation is complete. I am flattered that they recommend I should do so. 

-Cindy also recommended I look into working with ESL in the prison system as she started there and thinks I would be a good fit there. She also brought up options to teach online to asian students late night so I can do it on the side. 

-Karen and I discussed attending the next restaurant in persona activity and asked the class if I can come. They agreed. I am looking forward to that.

-I had my first course with Mr. Ernie Tootoo. He teaches an evening mixed level class. Per program standards he also includes daily lesson plans on the white board at the beginning of class as shwon below. The standards for the program's class implementation seems incredibly loose, allowing for each teacher to work how they deem fit, but guided by the CASAS system and state requirements, and it doesn't seem too overbearing on the teacher, other than students being pulled from classes to test throughout the semester. 

First Day

 On my first day Dr. Fischer walked me over to the upper-intermediate / advanced classroom and introduced me to Dr. Cindy Britton. She has been in charge of this class for some time now and is well established within the program. She has a Doctorate in Psychology and other degrees in Criminal Sciences. She instructs courses on all subjects and got her beginning with TESOL by teaching English to prison inmates. After a few minutes of conversation about the class, students began to arrive, and our discussion would continue during breaks and after class. All levels of instruction at the school are free by design to the students. It's not a credit earning program but provides hours of training and level certificates to the students. Classes at the school start from zero knowledge up to the class I observed today. Students will progress from this course into being fully matriculated credit earning students in degree fields at the university at this level and beyond. Once they reach a certain level in the CASAS exam, students will have completed the requirements to graduate from the program. I am told that during fall and spring semesters the classes are much larger, but during summer the numbers are low and a lot more catered to the small crowd remaining in between the larger semesters. Since students do not pay, and receive no penalty from missing class, some classes are fuller than others and it cannot be assumed that students learned the previous material. All student names are removed for confidentiality.

Classroom is a standard western classroom with rows of desks. The instructor has prepped the room with a picture of the beach with island sounds playing via Youtube on the projector, and class materials on desks that the students usually sit. The lesson plan is written on the board (this is a state requirement). Student 1 arrives, and Dr. Britton introduces me and makes small talk with them. They are a Spanish speaker who lives with a host family as an in-house nanny for two children. A second appears after 5 minutes of small talk. Student 2 is nervous about moving to a new job that requires handling American currency as a cashier. We discuss making change and do a few practices on the board. Then begin the planned lesson.

The lesson begins with a focus on Carribean Heritage Month. The handout (pictured below) is on the topic, and there is also a map of the Carribean included. Students take turns reading the material. The students move through the material pretty quickly, and as they read Cindy makes pronunciation corrections quickly to support their reading, but not distracting from the act of reading. When a student has a large hurdle to overcome, she would stop and explain the unknown vocabulary. Then we would continue. After reading we discussed the material in order to check for comprehension. The students understood the material as they could describe everything they read about. They also answered multiple choice questions that came with the article.

After completing the work on Carribean Heritage Month, the instructor hands out information on cyber security, which is a much longer, more technical read (pictured below). It was intended for American middle schoolers. The instructor had me read the first page. I did my best to only read a bit faster than they were reading, with clear enunciation. Students would read one page before moving to the other student. It seems that one paragraph at a time during the Carribean article acted as a warm-up to longer reading here. Student 2 rarely stopped, and Student 1 periodically stumbled over words. On words repeatedly mispronounced, Cindy recommended phonetic writings to be put in the margins to keep track of the pronunciation. 

The class seemed to follow a similar format throughout, using a variety of reading sources as input with accompanying quizzes and conversations about the course. There was a break for 15 minutes after 90 minutes. The lesson eventually ended with conversation over daily lives and schedules, as well as who plans to attend which days this week.