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May 30, 2000 |
The Eisenhower Symposium took place on May 30th. The questions listed below are questions that came out of the series of workshops throughout the 1999-2000 school year. The participants at the symposium discussed numbers 1,2 & 5. In sum, people felt that linking foreign language teachers with ESL teachers was important for two specific reasons: one, learning about our commonalties, and two, forming alliances for political purposes. The group decided that question #2 would form the basis for a good research project.
The group that discussed question #5 decided that having Betsy Costi and Gloria Muniz from ODE on campus in February in a forum which was open-ended was very helpful. The group would like to see officials from the state do more on-site visitations and hold more open-ended discussion forums where there isn't a canned presentation. These opinions will be submitted to officials at ODE as a first step to accomplishing this goal.
I would like to take this opportunity to again thank all of the project directors for all of their hard work on this year's Eisenhower project: Deborah Healey, Melinda Sayavedra, Eileen Waldschmidt and Jim Cassidy.
I would also like to announce that there will be another series of workshops next year in Lincoln County, Lebanon, Albany and Springfield school districts. The project directors for next year will include: Maria Dantas-Whitney and Deborah Healey from the English Language Institute, Eileen Waldschmidt from OSU's School of Education and Pat Rounds from the University of Oregon's School of Education.
Again, thank you all for participating in this year's Eisenhower project. We hope that it was a rewarding experience for all of you.
1. Overall
What have you learned from this mixture of K-12, ESOL, foreign language and bilingual practicing and pre-service teachers that you might not have learned with just your own cohorts?
2. Curriculum
Second language acquistion theory supports a communicative curriculum based on learner needs and interests. Is there a discrepancy between a communicative classroom and meeting the State Benchmarks? How can we do both?
3. Methods
A communicative curriculum calls for an eclectic approach to language teaching. How does a teacher decide what approach is best in any given situation? Provide examples.
4. Technology
Most teachers view using technology (computer software, the Internet, online conferencing, watching and making videos) as either not useful, too time consuming, or involving too much extra work for the teacher. Do you agree? If so, can you see any compelling reasons to use technology in the classroom and how you might implement it? If not, how would you convince these teachers that technology can be useful and easy to integrate into what they already do?
5. State Department of Education
What can you as a mixed group of K-12, ESOL, foreign language, bilingual, practicing and pre-service teachers do to improve the channels of communication between you and the Oregon Department of Education (ODE)? What can the ODE do?
6. Assessment
The public and State government are shouting that they want accountability from the schools. How can we use what we know about second language acquisition and about assessment to respond to their call for accountability.
7. Cross-cultural Awareness/Multi-cultural teaching
Many ESOL, foreign language and bilingual teachers feel that their mainstream counterparts lack sensitivity to and understanding of students from other cultures. What can ESOL, foreign language and bilingual teachers do, as a group, to alter this situation and make school a better place for ESOL students?
