FASTEF: Teaching Classes

Just so everyone doesn’t think that my entire life here in Dakar is one big vacation in the sunshine, I decided to do a few blog posts about the work I’m actually doing. So this is the second of these:

(I know I’ve mentioned some of this briefly in other posts, but I wanted to have this all in one place, so bear with me.)

For the first course I taught this semester, I was to focus on their English fluency while discussing the US. The beginning of the class was, of course, all about the elections. Because our election system is so ridiculously complicated, that took up about a month of classes.

So complicated!

Once I realized how limited their knowledge about the US was (the difference between a city and a state was difficult for them), I decided to do a project similar to what we did at UD with our French students, which is called the Tour de France, where each student in the class researches and presents on a French city. I did the same, but had each student choose an American city and called it the “Great American Road Trip.” They each had a questionnaire to fill out that required a bit of research on the city.

I used this questionnaire to guide our discussions about the US. For example, one of the questions was about outdoor activities available in or around their chosen city, so we did one class on the National Park System in the US. It was a hot topic at the time because the US National Park System had just turned 100 years old, so articles were plentiful.

We also discussed the green movement in the hotel industry, things like that. It was a nice way to guide the class discussions as they completed their research. I gave them the 9-question questionnaire about 2 months before it was to be handed in to me, and I told them to be working on it throughout the semester, as we discussed the different topics. Of course, just like my French students at UD, many of them left it to the last minute and were surprised at how much work it actually entailed! Students are the same everywhere… seriously!

Gutsy choosing the prof's home town for your project!

Then they used the information they found to create a 5 minute presentation that would convince their classmates to choose their city above the others presented. One aspect of this was to actually show them how to use PowerPoint.

Some classes, like the B2, had some rudimentary knowledge of the program already, but the C2 trainees had never used it before. The C2 is a specific demographic this year, being older men (in their 50s and 60s) who had been teaching English at the elementary school level out in fairly remote villages. Their English level itself is fairly low and their computer skills are non-existent. This is mostly due to the fact that electricity is scarce and unreliable, so it’s not something their generation uses very much, if at all. I spent an entire 2-hour session just showing them how to open PowerPoint and create the first title slide. It was very slow going… I had to explain how to “double click”, “highlight” things with the mouse, etc., but they were interested in learning how to do it, so it wasn’t too bad. I’m glad I made a rule that their slides weren’t allowed to have text on them (It took forever for the C2s to type anything). Since the students tend to write too much on slides,  I forbade it and told them to only use pictures and labels on their slides, the rest they would have to say.

B2 Roadtrip

I mapped out the trip for each class on Google maps (they thought that was pretty interesting) and the presentations went in the order that we would actually drive if we were in a car. The other professors in the department were invited to come along with us, and the director of the department, Dr. Mbaye, particularly enjoyed it. He really liked the concept, explaining to the students after we finished how valuable he found the idea. He was a Fulbright himself and told the students that he wasn’t really able to picture a map of the US and where the major cities were until after he lived there for a couple of years. With as much interest as there is in American culture, especially with the students they will be teaching, it’s valuable to know at least a little bit about the country and have an idea of the variety (of people, places, food, etc.) that is found in the US.  It's a project he thinks they should consider doing with their students. It was a fun way for them to learn a bit about the United States while helping them improve their English.

In one class, Atlanta and Los Angeles tied for the chosen city, while in the other class it was Atlanta and Santa Fe that tied for first place. Who can guess why Atlanta, Georgia was so popular? ;)

The second class that I taught was “Communicative Language Activities” which came out of a discussion about the fact that while many students could tell you the theory behind communicative teaching, they couldn’t actually plan activities that were communicative. So my class would be for them to actually put the theory into practice. I decided that I would have two parts to the class: one part would be based on articles from the English Teaching Forum, which is a publication the US state department puts out for English teachers around the world. It is full of articles about how to better teach English, most of them with actual activities described step-by-step.

This forum is a resource that I wanted them to be very comfortable with because I would like them to continue their professional development beyond their time at FASTEF. If they know the value of the articles found in the Forum, they will be more likely to seek them out, as well as the other resources available to them through the RELO and the US State Department. I chose 10 different articles that I thought went well with what we were working as it pertained to developing activities and then had each student (or pair) present one of the articles in class. They had to present the article and then host a discussion about it afterwards. They would also have to write a written response to questions I had pertaining to the article and discussion.

For the other element of the course, I had them each develop a unit, with lesson plans that included communicative activities. The completed unit was their final portfolio for the first semester. I walked them through how to develop different lessons (vocabulary, grammar, reading, listening, speaking, and writing) and then had them plan an actual lesson for each. They found this to be very, very difficult because they hadn’t ever been asked to actually put into practice the theories they’d been learning. We’re trying to train the first generation of communicative teachers, so they really haven’t ever seen this approach before.

They’re used to the older, non-communicative, teacher-centered approach to teaching language. It’s so engrained in them that teaching is about the standing in front of well-behaved, mostly silent, students who are being fed grammar rules and vocabulary lists by the all-knowing teacher. Helping them open up to new ideas about how language teaching has evolved has proven to be a great challenge. 

Another reason they found it challenging was that they were not used to the amount of work I was giving them. I approached this class with the idea that I could give them one (fairly short, academic-light) article per week to read, and a few short answer questions to respond to per week, while they slowly worked on activities for their lesson plans, without it being much of a problem. That was not the case. They complained that it was an unreasonable amount of work.

I wasn’t giving them even half as much work as I gave the 1st year undergrad French students at UD, so I was surprised and asked the head of the department if I was legitimately giving them too much work and he said “they always say that... don’t worry about it!” Regardless, they convinced me, against my better judgment, to allow them to do their final portfolio in pairs instead of individually. I held extra 2-hour long workshops once a week when they could come in and work on their lesson plans with my help. I had them turn in rough drafts and went through them with the students so they could see how they needed to change activities to make them more communicative. In the end, just like with every class, there were students who really seemed to get it, some who really tried to get it, and some who neither got it, nor tried to get it (i.e. they just didn’t care). Those three categories have existed in every class I’ve ever taught anywhere, so I wasn’t surprised. In the end I had students who told me that they’d never had to work so much in a class (really?), but that they learned a ton of real-life, applicable teaching skills that they’d needed. I’m glad most of them appreciated it because it was also a huge amount of work on my part!

For the second semester, which just started, they are doing internships out in schools around Dakar. They will have classes only on Thursdays and Saturdays, so I’m not teaching a content course this semester. Along with going out to observe them in their internships, I will be hosting a “Lesson Planning Club” where they can all come together to bounce ideas off of each other as they plan their lessons for their internships. This was an idea I had when the director suggested I host a film club or something like that.

I asked the students which they would prefer and it was unanimous that facilitating collaboration and exchange on lesson planning would be much more beneficial. It should be fun, I like lesson planning!! 

I know you're thinking it, so... Thanks! "Nerd" is a term of endearment in my world ;)