So, here’s a little bit about what I’ve been up to professionally during my time as an ELF in El Salvador. I’ve got four main projects to work on at the country’s binational center, Centro Cultural Salvadoreño, which are designing a peer observation program for the teachers, the creation of conversation clubs for the adult program, revising the teacher training course, and helping to make supervision more efficient and effective.
You can read more about my host community and experiences outside of work on my personal blog.
At some point, I’ll be adding more about my professional achievements, special projects, lesson
plans, syllabuses, goals and wants for the future of my projects, students, teachers and faculty.
Peer Observation Project
I have met on several occasions with the teachers of the adult weekly program schedule in San Salvador to discuss perceptions on observation, observation techniques, and steps that should be followed. These meetings led to discussions in the small teacher groups. Teachers were formally trained in observation and reflection strategies before the first term of classes began in January, 2007. In addition, teachers at the San Miguel have begun to do peer observations on their own. I would like to use the months of January and February to focus on extending this project to include Saturday teachers, especially those in the pre-escolar, escolar, escolar juvenil, and juvenil programs. As part of the supervision development project, I spent a good number of hours in my first two months observing. In all, I observed over forty classes and gave feedback to various teachers. Some of these observations were done with a supervisor, to (1) learn how the observation and feedback process work, (2) open grounds for the discussion of observation techniques and the revision of observation forms, and (3) discuss with teachers’ their opinions and ideas on being observed.
Conversation Clubs
These are my students:
- Conversation Club for Adult/Teen Program
Total of 14 weeks, 4 hours a week
350 student hours in attendance overall
94 individual students have attended - Conversation Club for STB (Secretariado Técnico Bilingüe) Program:
2nd and 3rd year high school students
Approximately 15 girls per group, 45 minutes/day, from September-November
I’m happy to say that after my move to San Miguel in April, the conversation clubs have continued at the same force as before in San Salvador.
Workshops and Conferences
- New Directions in Technology: Bringing Blogging to the Language Classroom. Annual NCTE Honduras Conference, Tegucigalpa, Honduras. 05/25/07.
- The Role of Age in Second Language Acquisition. Universidad Pedagogica de El Salvador. 04/23/07. 40 participants.
- Moving out of the Comfort Zone: Innovative Teaching through Self and Peer Evaluations. Annual NCTE Costa Rica Conference, San Jose, Costa Rica. 01/25/07.
- Blogging across Boundaries: Connecting Students through Online Journaling. Annual NCTE Costa Rica Conference, San Jose, Costa Rica. 01/25/07.
- Moving out of the Comfort Zone: Innovative Teaching through Self and Peer Evaluations.
CCS San Salvador, 01/03/07: 66 participants, 1.5 hours
CCS San Miguel, 01/04/07: 13 participants, 2 hours - Grouping Practices in the Classroom
Colegio Americano, San Salvador, 01/08/07
Preschool-5th grade: 12 participants, 2 hours
6th grade-10th grade: 8 participants, 2 hours - Teaching Language through Functions
UNICO, Santa Ana, 11/16/06: 18 participants, 2 hours - MINED language teaching methodology workshops
San Miguel, 11/4/06 & 11/18/06: 15 participants, 16 hours - 41st Annual ASOCOPI Conference
Bridging the Digital Divide: Bring Blogging to the Classroom
Ibagué, Colombia: 16 participants, 1.5 hours
Teacher Training Course Revision
One of my main projects has been to revise the BNC’s teacher training course. As part of the process, I taught and observed various sessions during two different offerings of the course. We developed a Yahoo!Group for the participants, which you can visit here.
Other Special Activities
I’ve had the pleasure to get to participate in many other activities outside of my projects. I taught one of the adult advanced levels for two months, have substituted many classes, which has let me get to know the student population better. Around Christmas time, CCS collected toys to take to children at the Hospital Benjamin Bloom, Saint Vincent de Paul orphanage, and the women’s prision. I got to be the green M&M, white puffy hands and all. Maybe next year, if my project gets renewed, I’ll find myself an elf outfit!
Early this winter, I’ve been collaborating more with the Peace Corps volunteers, both in training for them and in setting up a new teacher training course for public school teachers.
