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.