Professional Development
A discussion of the professional development challenges subscribers face and how they address them.

I would love to hear from the group about "professional development" challenges you face. How do we impart learning theory to part-time staff with degrees but no educational background. How do we tap into the importance of training and have staff identify with continuing professional development. It seems to me that it would be of benefit to look at the experience of the Adult Education instructors and requirement from the federal grant but local authority can make up a large part of the requirement they have adopted which does not put professional development up front? Resources are needed to help instructors stay sharp for the students.

Valerie Y. Woodard, MA

I think that it's almost entirely a matter of resources, Both the feds and the states are willing to pay for student contact hours, but not much to help improve the skills teachers bring to the "contact." Ultimately, this is a policy/budgetary issue at the highest levels, I think. And the ESL field as well as others will have to organize themselves to fight for it in the corridors of power.

Forrest Chisman

Hi,

I don't know if it's too late to add another comment. I am one of those people you describe: a part-time ESL teacher with a degree in another field. Until this winter I'd never taken an education course in my life. I came in with good knowledge of English (former editor and writer) and training as an ESL literacy tutor. In our school district, adult ed teachers can be paid for workshops and in-service training, and our program has offered a lot of both. But I've been told that I haven't absorbed enough educational theory and good practices through these offerings and have decided I really need some formal education. So I'm starting to take graduate classes but it's entirely at my expense. This is a fairly high price for a part-time teacher with no benefits to pay. It rankles me a bit when I see the full-time teachers in our district taking graduate classes at district expense so they can further their skills and climb up a pay ladder that starts 15 rungs above my head. Even if I wanted to take Education 101, I would be paying for it myself. You could argue that these other folks took basic classes at their expense before they were hired but most of them didn't come to their teaching jobs with a wealth of real-life experience and knowledge. In other words, I paid for my BA years ago as did they; I contributed the wisdom and knowledge gained from working with the language for 25 years, and now I'm paying for further education.

This is a long way of saying: We career change teachers can offer a lot but we could use a little help, too. Like basic ESL/educational theory classes, offered close to home and at shared expense. I would sign up in a second.

Gail Burnett

I remember going through the same things to get my masters.

Plus, a high percentage of students getting paid by their school district to take classes that I was in had not been out of school that long. It's a sad side effect to attempting to professionalize the profession. So many wanted their A and that was about it. It seemed to me that ongoing education ought to be the focus. For example, one graduate class a year with follow-up through the year to ensure application.

Thanks for listening,

Mary Jane Jerde

Videos of good teachers teaching ESL are tremendously helpful. San Diego used to use them for new teachers and probably still does. Does anyone know where to get such videos? The main problem an inexperienced ESL teacher has is how to elicit language from students, and watching a good teacher is the best way to learn the techniques. The biggest mistake new ESL teachers make is too much talking themselves -- usually talking about things students cannot possibly understand.

Mary Lynn Simons

Colorado State Department of Education now has a Literacy Instruction Authorization Certificate that can be issued to people who pass four of five courses that are offered through the community college system. Courses are a combination of online, "face", and hybrid. Teachers in AEFLA programs are required to get the certification. The state provides some assistance with scholarship. They have also developed a system for staff development credit for workshops attended at state adult education conferences.

Gail Bundy

Gail,

This is great. Colorado is being a real leader in making it possible for adult educators to gain recognition for their training. What do the credits lead to? Are there financial incentives or a pay scale that reflects this training?

Jodi Crandall

MLOTS (David Rosen in Mass.) was working on a project to produce online instructional demo/best practices videos. Anyone know of the progress on that? Joanne Hala

I knew that Lynn Savage had developed a series of these some years ago, so I emailed her to ask if they were still available and also if she knew of others.

What follows is the information that she sent. Jodi Crandall

The title of our series is Teacher Training through Video. The publisher is Longman/Pearson. The videos are now on two DVD's - 6 lessons each - 1 on lesson planning and 5 on lower level techniques on one DVD; the other 6 of high level techniques.

About the time we did ours a woman from New York (I can't remember her name now) also did a series with federal dollars. I believe they were published through Laubach Literacy or ProLiteracy. I don't know if they are still available. The Toronto Board of Education also did something called TESL Vision: A Video Resource for TESL teaching. I used part of one of them when I was doing Peace Corps training. As I recall, their approach is more reflective and less didactic than TTTV. Thanks, Lynn

Thank you this is very important information for professional development.

Valerie Woodard

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