ESL, Importance of Teacher Training

When the 2011 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship were announced, I was thrilled that the New Teacher Center, an organization getting brilliant results in teacher training was among the recipients. Having worked at both The National Mentoring Partnership and at at SH’s English as a Second Language program, I think this is really important recognition. Teaching is tough and support for new professionals is inconsistent. I’m still on the fence [link] about whether mentoring children is a truly effective change agent, but I have experienced first-hand how important the existence [link] and nonexistence [link] of professional mentoring can be in influencing your future career steps.

Training volunteer ESL teachers for a program operating on a shoestring budget is tricky. Anyone who is a native speaker of English can teach English, right? Before I became certified to teach ESL through Oxford Seminars (OS) in a 60-hour program, I wasn’t sure why this was necessary. Now, as an International Development student, I think I should have had a significant amount more training. After all, I would not have been qualified to teach in the United States (you need a 4-year teaching degree). But after no examination, one 10-minute “simulated class period” and only 6 days in class, I received an attractive certificate which gave me more than enough training to teach in English schools abroad.

OS proved to be a good introductory course for overseas ESL training, but I soon learned that the stakes are different for ESL teachers who intended to teach in volunteer programs in the U.S. At SH, we chose Stand Out as our book for its ease of maneuvering for our teachers and incredible life skills lessons. As volunteer coordinators, we even encouraged prospective teachers with little-to-no teaching experience to sign up for a class. This may sound contradictory to my last paragraph, but we didn’t have much of a choice. ESL teachers who are qualified are already in paid positions, or are teaching around the city. We received a tip from an ESL Program Manager: “Don’t ask ESL teachers or teacher trainers for anything for free. They already give away too much of their time for free as it is. If you are going to bring in a professional, pay them.” How did we know that SH’s ESL program wouldn’t tank with unqualified teachers?

We did have two retired ESL teachers, so we got lucky. We are also lucky to live in Columbia Heights [link], a young and passionate neighborhood which is changing [link]. We have lots of  your professionals who were by nature, 1. interested to live and build their lives in a thriving, diverse neighborhood 2. many Columbia Heights residents/Washingtonians in general are public servants and are professional and motivated and 3. Catholic– and we assume interested in service and education. Additionally, with 2 teachers per day, 3 classes per week, this would expose students to 6 different teaching styles. We didn’t have much evidence that the bad would outweigh the good, but we hoped that since many of our volunteers would be eager and avid learners. Our strategy for them was simple. 1.  Offer a bit of training ourselves for 3 hours on a Saturday morning. More here.  2. At the training, provide them with resources on where to look for supplemental lesson plans and classroom ideas, ESL teacher trainings around the city and 3. Update them with newsletters and ongoing community support and information on ESL networks around the city.