Not only are we trying to be the
best teachers as we can be, we are also trying to make changes in our
department. Over the second semester we
have tried our best to lead our department into the changes that we believed
that it needed. Some things have turned
out to be successful where others have failed.
The programs that we have started
included a common curriculum for all of the English professors to follow. This was a big fete to accomplish. As new
teachers we relied on our fellow teachers to help build a day-to-day curriculum
for each level of English. We thought this was important because the department
has a problem giving consistent education to their students. Students were going from English one to
English two and so on, learning present simple and pronouns over and over; never
building upon their previous knowledge.
Another way that we wanted to
improve consistency was to assign a level to a set of teachers. Last semester every teacher was assigned to
all levels of English so all the teachers had to build lesson plans for each
class and each level. This put a large
load of work on the teachers but also made it really inconsistent for the
students. We suggested to have a set of
three teachers be assigned to only teaching one level and then these teachers
could meet and discuss their classes. In
the end every teacher got assigned to about two levels and unfortunately no
meetings have been held. I still think
of this as an accomplishment as everyone’s workload has been significantly
lightened and hopefully the teachers can dedicate more time to making one or
two brilliant lesson plans rather then 5 mediocre ones.
Another problem for our department
is the accountability of the teachers.
Sure we had a curriculum built but nothing was encouraging the teachers
to actually abide by this curriculum. So
we decided to implement a standardized test for final exams. In general, I have never been an advocate for
standardized testing, but in this case we felt like it was a good way to begin
accountability of the teachers. Again,
in the end this attempt fell short and the exams have yet to be created. We are coming up on final exam time so I
doubt that this will come together.
Another disadvantage the students
have is that they only have English class once a week. If you have ever tried to learn a language
you know that this is just not enough time.
Under the universities regulations we learned right away that this was a
disadvantage that would not change. So
we had to be creative and work around the system. Although we could not have more mandatory
classes we could have voluntary ones; aka clubs. We started having two types of clubs. One for
the lower level students, the students that needed more time for English
practice and another for more advanced students, those looking for more of a
challenge. We have clubs 10 times a week
and every club is jam-packed. The clubs
proved to be the most successful of all our endeavors and they are very
rewarding. I just hope that these
changes will be continued after we leave.
We do know that the university has asked for three WorldTeach volunteers
next year so the university must also appreciate our efforts and want to
continue with our advances.