The opportunity to revise and improve the three courses I regularly teach has made my curriculum dynamic and evolving. These three courses are an introduction to TESOL methods, Curriculum and Materials for ELLs, and the practicum in TESOL.
By seeing how the core materials are applied by teacher candidates in their fieldwork settings with ELL students and by spending time in classrooms with program graduates, I continually work to make course content meaningful, relevant, and substantive so that my teachers can “take flight” successfully upon graduation.
Methods in Teaching P-12 ESL
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- EDESL 796.1/796.2, PreK-12 Methods in TESOL serves as the introductory course and is the entry point in the program to the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages. The course also provides candidates with extensive fieldwork in New York City public schools, thus supporting teacher candidates in making theory come to life. Due to the extended nature of this fieldwork, I worked with colleagues to pilot an observation of teaching rubric to ensure that (1) candidates would indeed be practice teaching and not simply observing in fieldwork hours; (2) the evaluation process would become familiar to candidates early on in the program; and (3) the course could serve as a gateway to assess professional dispositions for teaching.
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- Spending time at school sites is vital to my ongoing capacity to provide meaningful instruction in the TESOL Methods course. I believe I am only as current as the most recent time I have spent with young people in classrooms.
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- Meeting students in their first semester of the program in Methods, then again in Curriculum and Materials, and then again at the end of the program in student teaching practicum is not only personally fulfilling, as it enables me to develop meaningful relationships, but also enables me to study the impact of the program on their learning.
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- Micro-teaching, which are performance of teaching simulations done in class are an important component of preparing new ESL teachers. These micro-teaching episodes are also video-recorded so that the teacher candidates can review their own performance.
Curriculum and Materials
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- EDESL 771, Curriculum and Materials across the Content Areas is a course which supports candidates in developing understandings of the linguistic demands of texts and tasks ELLs face in their content area classes. Key skills are learning to adapt and modify instruction in order to create access to content area learning and building meaningful units of study that integrate language and content learning goals.
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- Curriculum Teams present their units of study. This team developed a poetry unit for upper elementary English language learners that was aligned with the Common Core standards and incorporated dramatic speaking in order to make the texts come alive.
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- Although this course has now been newly revised as an online course, we still meet in person and encouraging my teacher candidates to take on the roles of students as a means to enhancing their awareness of their roles as teachers is a dynamic component of the course.
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- Co-teaching with Marcus Artigliere, a former student, has been a wonderful opportunity for reciprocal learning. As a current middle-school teacher, he brings in real-life examples and shares innovative technologies he is using to enhance the curriculum and materials available to ELLs. Our co-planning and co-instruction has enriched the course and enables us to continue to grow and learn.
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- Moving my Curriculum and Materials course into an online environment (we currently meet in person 3 times and online 12 times) has been an exciting teaching challenge. With the support of FITT grants and ICIT staff support, I have been able to engage my teacher candidates and myself in a learning experience that offers many advantages over face-to-face classes. One affordance is that modules created within the course, such as one on Academic Language, can be easily exported and shared with colleagues. The focus on ELLs and academic language development across the curriculum is an important aspect of the new teacher performance assessment. This module has already been shared with several faculty members in the School of Education.
Practicum in TESOL
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- The Practicum in TESOL serves as the culminating course in the Masters program in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages at Hunter College and also provides candidates with a year-long, clinically supervised teaching experience in New York City public schools.
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- Providing meaningful leadership to the practicum course is enhanced by time spend in classrooms where my current and former teacher candidates work. In this image I am “borrowing” a class from a graduate who was teaching in the high school where I last worked.
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- An important aspect of Practicum is encouraging teacher candidates to make deep and genuine connections not only with their ELL students, but also with the school, its community, and families. By sharing my experiences as a parent involved in her children’s school, I hope to model integration of the personal and professional.
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- Practicum is designed to be a place to talk through many of the dilemmas of practice encountered in the complex work of urban teaching. Here we are discussing cases that teacher candidates have brought into the session.
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- Teaching courses at Hunter alongside former students turned part-time instructors is a special privilege (from L-R, Adrian Spatzer, Julie Kasper, me, Marcus Artigliere & Sarah Rorimer).
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- One exciting part of my work is the possibility of seeing many ESL classrooms at many different levels, and in many different school sites. I enjoy being allowed the time to try out teaching techniques in various classroom contexts.
