FASTEF: New Program

Another class, or level of students, has been recently added to FASTEF: A master’s degree. Originally, and until this year, FASTEF was a training institute that awarded certificates in teaching, not degrees. It was under the umbrella of the local university (Université Cheikh Anto Diop, or UCAD) and was not accredited on its own. Last year it became its own entity, so can now offer a master’s degree in teaching whatever specialty they decide. I had heard about this change from Michelle, the Fulbright who was here last year, but hadn’t really heard anything about it until one day they told me we were going to have a meeting about the applications to the new program.

I come in for the meeting (I’m still on American time and show up annoyingly on time) and no one is there, but there are stacks of papers on the table. Our head of department (HOD) Dr. Mbaye comes in and explains that the administration office dropped off the applications and we had to start going through them. They literally just dropped them off as they had come in. There were almost 700 applications that hadn’t been processed at all. No list had been generated or anything, so we decided that the first thing to be done was create an excel sheet with everyone listed. We literally spent 10 hours straight plugging all their information into a list.

There were 6 computers being used and some people were reading information off to others who were typing. As the youngest and most computer literate person in the room, I ended up being the fastest at entering the information, entering 245 of the 680 applications. Then we realized that the announcement sent out to students had an unfortunate mistake that told students that they needed their diploma or their transcript (instead of and). This meant that we had to put an announcement out to everyone that they needed to bring their transcripts by a certain date in order for their applications to be complete. Once they did, they had to be placed with the corresponding applications. It was an insane amount of work, but we got it all worked out and then the professors chose 80 students to interview, finally selecting 40 students for the program.

A few weeks later we had another meeting to decide what classes were going to be offered and who would teach them. We had a few things on the agenda, one of them being deciding on when the program was going to start. I was thinking it would be in the fall of this year, but they said “how about next week?” Everyone agreed. It’s still surprising to me that things can come together so last minute. I asked some of the professors how they could develop a master level course in less than a week and their response was that they’ll be teaching the same modules they’ve been teaching the B1 and B2 classes for the last 20 years or so. I guess that makes sense.

I later had a discussion with Dr. Mbaye about this, just out of curiosity, because I thought that the Master program that we’re doing was to prepare the students for the exam that will get them into the B1/B2 program. My question was this:  if the teachers are going to teach the Master students the same modules they teach the B1 and B2 students, what are they going to teach them when they get into the B1/B2 program? He didn’t have an answer except to say that he had made that same observation, but no one seems to want to listen to him, so they’ll figure it out later. We were both glad to know that our assessment of the current situation is accurate, even if no one else seems to see the endgame.

They asked me to do something with the Master students as well, so I took the advice of the B1/B2 students and we’re doing practice teaching. I split the class up into groups of 6 and each group will design and teach a full one-hour lesson. Most of them have never been in front of a class, so it’s a great way for them to start because their classmates act as the students. On Mondays I meet with the group that is teaching so we can plan the lesson with each member of the group being chosen to teach one activity. This gives them the theory behind communicative lesson planning in much smaller groups and very organically because it is while actually planning and creating activities. On Thursdays, the group teaches their lesson to the other students in the class and I record it. Just after they finish, we watch each student’s activity and comment/critique. I don’t grade their actual teaching practice, because that would just be mean. They’ve never been in front of students before, so they’re stressed enough without being graded on it! I give them reflection questions to answer after each lesson, and I grade them on their participation. It’s not necessarily a content course, but just a chance for them to practice teaching a bit. One of the questions I usually ask them is: “What did you learn about teaching that you didn’t know before?” One of the answers I’ve gotten consistently is that they learned there is much more to teaching than just being able to speak English well; that teaching itself is a skill that has to be learned which is much harder and more complicated than they thought.

My work here is done, ha ha!