Teachers & Teaching

TWBAT: Switch gears midstream when lesson isn’t working; be spontaneous when circumstances require it; modify or toss a lesson plan on the fly.

How: Have eyes open to students’ reactions and my own feelings; ask students for their ideas; be myself and confident enough that my brain is fluid; have lesson plans in back pocket; remember how I do interviews: going with the flow by being highly attentive to what they’re saying rather than worrying about what I’ll say next; have backup plans for when my brain runs dry.

Advice from my Peers

• Each teaching day write three things I did well [Kim]
• Don’t be self-deprecating or self-critical; act confident [Sarah]
• With novice teachers, initial focus is on self. Later they feel freer to adapt, watch, be selves and SEE the students [Kim]
• Don’t talk down my teaching experience. Make it as truthfully big as a I can. Give it a spitshine. [Sarah]

Learners & Learning

TWBAT: Find the line between challenging the students — setting the bar high enough — and thwarting them with unrealistic expectations, and know how to vary these expectations according to individual student capabilities.

How: Learn how to do initial assessment; understand enough about the characteristics of their language to be able to anticipate and plan lessons for problem areas. Allow time for peer scaffolding as an activity early in a lesson, but to let the end result/culmination be individual, so they are working to their own best level.

Language & Culture

TWBAT: Learn how to find a subject of interest — cultural and/or personally relevant — and drill into it to isolate the linguistic knowledge that needs to be explored for each group of students.

How: First, of course, I must find the subject of interest. I’m particularly drawn to possibilities that involve their personal stories. These may take any form: written or oral. So how do I seek the deeper language lessons within? One idea is to look at the genre approaches that break texts into six types and describe the types of structure and grammar typically found within. Another is to record and analyze (after the fact) a spoken description, to see a) the general level of fluency — only present tense with limited vocabulary to conditional aspects with academic lexicon — and b) to identify the text type and c) to find errors that need addressing.

Professionalism

TWBAT: Be able to work within the school’s bureaucracy and administration without frustration: to feel confident in getting my ideas across and being heard, without being shut down and without becoming defensive.

How: Even though I’m a new teacher, to evoke my significant life history as a way to bolster my self-esteem before a potentially loaded encounter with the administration. If I am meeting for a specific thing — to ask them to consider a new approach, or to defend a method I’ve been using — to bring in supporting evidence from my experience (even non-teaching) and that of others. And most of all, try to listen without being defensive. Try to breathe and be relaxed and be in no hurry to reply. Don’t feel I have to answer something on the spot. To use some of the techniques from mindfulness training (which I can’t find now): Describe the situation, Explain what I want, Ask for it, Destroy the world… (I’m not getting this right. Its acronym was something like ASK DAD, but I’m making it up as DEAD.

Self & Other

TWBAT: Take full advantage of the opportunity to be part of another culture by getting to know its people — with exchanges limited by cultural mores on appropriacy.

How: As mentioned, an area I really want to explore is the idea of having the students document their experience as a central part of the curriculum, if possible. Through these exercises — listening, helping them distill to gist, guiding the exercises, and possibly even visiting their families as part of the process — I will have the chance to know my students as people, both inside and outside the class.

Reflective Practice

TWBAT: Actually get around to writing reflective journals.

How: Though I’m a writer, these are hard for me. One issue is that I’m too busy, and once I get to writing I have a hard time stopping until I’m through. So maybe I should give myself a time limit even of 15 minutes a day. Another idea is to give myself a writing prompt, ideally a question that emerged from the day’s activities — and not only teaching activities. One danger is I don’t want to focus on the negative. As Kim pointed out, it’s important to review the good things you did on a given day. But maybe I can think of prompts that are not directly tied to the experience so that I’m just worrying about what happened (though that needs to be part of it) but also more philosophical and theoretical and abstract ones: think of a time in my history when a teacher attempted to teach what I did today, and how was this different… that sort of thing.

Full Text of MAT Internationalist Internship Standards

Supervisors use these standards as guidelines for their assessment of the MAT intern’s development over the course of the internship period.

Teachers and Teaching

Intern is able to plan and implement a series of purposefully linked lessons with objectives that meet the diverse (e.g. cultural, linguistic, learning) needs of learners.

Indicators:

• Able to explain the reasons for linking a series of lessons in terms of the expected gains in student learning.
• Able to modify his or her teaching based on the way students respond to content, language difficulty, pace and activity type.

Intern is able to organize a productive learning environment.

Indicators:

• Able to organize the class space, time, materials, equipment for effective learning.
• Able to use activities to construct and support community and cooperation.
• Able to manage student participation appropriately and effectively.

Learners & Learning

Intern is able to assess the competence and needs of learners and use that assessment to inform teaching.

Indicators:

• Has knowledge of appropriate procedures for identifying, screening, assessing and monitoring students’ proficiency and progress.
• Able to get personal feedback from students about what they are learning and respond appropriately.
• Able to get feedback from multiple forms of assessment.
• Able to document learning.
• Able to make appropriate compromises between the needs of the students and the requirements of the institution.
• Able to plan further lessons based on needs perceived in a lesson.

Language and Culture

Intern can create and facilitate meaningful communicative language learning experiences drawing on a rich understanding of the form, meaning and use of the English language.

Indicators:

• Able to develop lessons with clear language learning objectives based on knowledge of students’ L1, L2 level and performance.
• Able to identify learning challenges and prioritize objectives accordingly in a principled way.
• Able to embed focus on form in meaningful communication.
• Able to integrate grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation in his or her lessons.
• Able to create a classroom in which students have access to and can negotiate meaning.

Intern is able to integrate the study of culture and language with the goal to promote cultural knowledge and awareness.

Indicators:

• Able to develop a thematic unit for the study of the target culture with the goal of expanding both L2 abilities and cultural knowledge.
• Able to create lessons that ask students to use L2 to compare/contrast their home culture(s) and target culture.
• Able to create opportunities for students to understand ways that attitudes and behaviors are culturally formed.

Professionalism

Intern conducts him or herself professionally according to the requirements of the host school and SIT Graduate Institute.

Indicators:

• Is prepared and on time for classes and other professional responsibilities.
• Has cordial and respectful relations with the cooperating teacher and staff.
• Invites, listens to and acts on feedback from cooperating teacher and supervisor.
• Collaborates effectively and appropriately with others.
• Makes efforts to understand the institutional requirements, structures and context and participates in the activities of the school when appropriate.

Self and Others

Intern draws upon awareness of self and actively seeks a genuine connection with others.

Indicators:

• Gets to know the students and their backgrounds.
• Regularly seeks formal and informal feedback from students about their experience and responds appropriately.
• Is able to identify own strengths and challenges when working with others and takes appropriate action.

Reflective Practice

Intern is able to use reflection and self-assessment in professional growth.

Indicators:

• Able to identify own strengths and weaknesses in any of the standards.
• Able to write clear memos.
• Able to inquire into and evaluate the effectiveness of one’s teaching.
• Able to change one’s teaching based on analysis of student learning.
• Able to articulate specific progress in meeting internship standards.