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This will be the final Eisenhower newsletter for this year's project. It includes
This project has forged new relationships and strengthened existing ones. Ithas brought teachers together in a forum of 'Teachers Helping Teachers' where we have all had the opportunity to learn from one another. It has provided 'food for thought' and 'hands-on' experiences. And finally, it has provided some resources where even a small amount can make a very big difference.
The project directors thank all of the participants who have shared their timewith us this year. We look forward to continuing and expanding on our established links.
Joyce Bryan, Deborah Healey, Eileen Waldschmidt, Melinda Sayavedra and Jim Cassidy
Mark your calendars for a symposium on this year's Eisenhower workshops to be held on May 30, 2000 from 3:00-5:00 in the afternoon with a no-host reception to follow at Nearly Normal's restaurant from 5:00-6:00. This will not be a touchy-feely, pat yourself on the back session, but will offer an opportunity to grapple with some of the many questions that have come out of the workshop sessions throughout the year. We will not only grapple with the ideas, but we will also work on some tasks associated with the content of those questions.
We've scheduled the symposium to meet after regular school hours for two hours to make it more convenient for people to attend. We hope this short symposium will not only bring closure to this year's grant but will lead to future collaboration through more workshops, idea sharing and advocating for all of our students.
The symposium will be held in Education Hall 301. We look forward to seeing you all there!
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Assessing Oral Proficiency in Our Classrooms
On April 13, Jim Cassidy and Deborah Lindsey provided the participants of the Eisen-ELI workshops with some insight into the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), how it is conducted, what it assesses and how we can use the OPI as a model to assess oral proficiency in our own classrooms.
As teachers to second language learners, be that ESOL, or Spanish, French, Japanese, German, etc., we owe it to our students to be knowledgeable about authentic communicative language assessment. We need to know how to assess and to document our students' language proficiency in order to be advocates for them in a system that demands more of students and of teachers than is often attainable in the short time we have them each day.
Jim and Deborah gave us some tools for gearing communicative assessment to the individual in ways that both challenge students and make them feel successful during the assessment process - the way a well done OPI does. Our task is to take these ideas and come up with assessment tools that work for us and our students in our teaching situation. Thank you Jim and Deborah for getting us started.
Cross-Cultural Awareness Day at the Workshops
Culture is the glasses through which we see the world. In the morning of April 14th, the ELI-Eisenhower workshops focused on the glasses we share as Americans, in particular as Anglo-Americans. We explored 13 Anglo-American values and compared them to some of the values from cultures quite different from ours. By stepping outside of and examining our own cultural values, we have a tool for understanding when cross-cultural misunderstandings or conflict occur, a tool for getting at the source of the misunderstanding, for seeing a situation from another culture's viewpoint and for going beyond judging the behavior or belief.
A wonderful panel of international students brought us their personal stories and insights on being an ESOL student in the U.S., the difficulties and what helped them most. They gave very specific ideas of what classroom teachers and schools can do to make ESOL students more comfortable and better able to reach their potential. In the afternoon, Eileen guided us through four approaches for including multiculturalism in the any curriculum. Instead of being content with simply introducing cross-cultural information in our classrooms, she challenged us to reach for the levels of transformation and social action where students can begin to view concepts and issues from the perspective of others and make decisions and take action on important social issues.
We finished off the afternoon by exploring multicultural sites on the Internet and we found some really fantastic sites for all classrooms, content areas and ages. Check the links at http://osu.orst.edu/dept/eli/eisen-eli/diversity.html. There is stuff there you can take off the net today and use in your classroom tomorrow.
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If you haven't visited the Nicenet conferencing site lately, there are some new questions from Eileen and some final questions from Melinda to be bantered about. There are also some extremely thoughtful responses from Steve Bismarck, Mark Swartzfager, and Scott Greenhow.
When we established this conferencing site last fall, we really hoped that all participants would embrace the idea of sharing ideas and thoughts online, and we saw this forum as a way to improve linkages among school districts and those of us at OSU. Although participation has not been as active as we had hoped, those who have participated have contributed valuable thoughts and insights.
This site will remain active and can continue to be a source of information sharing plus a place to utilize the annotated links that we created in the February and April workshops. Please feel free to add links as well as to post new messages and/or questions. In fact, this site will have new participants with the onset of next year's workshops including the Lebanon and Springfield school districts.
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A new proposal was submitted by the English Language Institute, Schools of Education at both Oregon State University and the University of Oregon, and the Albany, Lincoln County, Lebanon and Springfield School Districts for the 2000-2001 school year. This proposal again includes PTEP students from both universities and practicing teachers in grades K-8. This year, the focus will be on helping limited English proficient learners become successful in the standards-based proficiency environment. In keeping with the theme established in this past year's grant, we will continue with the logo of "Teachers Helping Teachers" and will utilize the expertise from practicing teachers in the Corvallis School District to deliver on-site workshops. We haven't gotten final approval on this grant yet, but we have made it to the second round and this bodes well for acceptance. Many thanks to Jane Averill and Deborah Healey for writing this new proposal.
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In February, we put out a call for proposals to help teachers gain the resources and/or training necessary to incorporate a cross-cultural component into their programs and share the information with their colleagues. We are happy to announce that we were able to offer stipends to four of the teachers who submitted proposals.
Congratulations to Susan Roebber, the ESL Coordinator for Lincoln County Schools who will receive $1000 "... to obtain resources to enhance learning for English Language Learners and Spanish Language Learners. These resources will be made available to students, teachers, and parents on a check-out basis."
Congratulations to Steve Bismarck, ESL and Spanish Teacher at South Albany High School. Steve will receive $800 "... to fund a small reading library which will contain low readability periodicals in both English and Spanish (or bilingual versions), low readability novels and a combination of print/video materials along with CD ROM programs."
Congratulations to Jan Byers, ESL Teacher at Garfield Elementary in Corvallis. Jan will receive $800 "... to purchase curriculum materials and student textbooks to support a FLES (Foreign Language in Elementary School) program in Spanish, and to purchase curriculum materials and textbooks to support primary literacy training and content instruction in Spanish for native Spanish speakers." One of the expected outcomes of this proposal is "...Spanish speaking parents would have the opportunity to work with their children at home in a language they can read, thus creating more of a home-school connection."
Finally, congratulations to Angie Voss, ESL Teacher at Lincoln School in Corvallis. Angie will receive $500 to help "... fund a professional speaker to give a presentation on cross-cultural awareness to interested staff members in the Corvallis School District." In fact, Angie's proposal has caught the interest of district officials and they are now considering using Angie's plan to hire the keynote speaker for the beginning of the school year district-wide meeting. Hopefully, this will be another way to help continue the linkages that have been forged this year between OSU and the Corvallis School District.
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Deborah Healey has now updated the Eisenhower web site and included access to the annotated links to useful sites that we all posted to Nicenet in the February and April workshops. This is just another way to access the sites that were deemed by workshop participants to have value as classroom resources, and Deborah has made it so easy. She has categorized all of the links so that you don't have to look through all of the links to find the one you want. You simply click on the category; for example, you might click on Spanish or German. So, now you have access to these links via both the Nicenet site and through the Eisenhower-ELI web site.
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--Mary Langlois
At the cross-cultural workshop, the panel of nine students from various countries was the highlight of the day for me. Lots of useful ideas and information. I will definitely use the International Cultural Service Program in the future.
--Mark Swartzfager
The sessions kept getting better as the workshops went on and I was pleased with the experience.
--Erika Anderson
