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| Tuesday, October 13, 2009 |
| Site Visit - UCR IEP |
As my target teaching level is IEP, I decided to conduct my interview at University of California, Riverside’s University Extension Intensive English Program. I was granted an interview with Stephanie Landon on Monday, October 12. As I did my undergraduate work at UCR, I knew about the Extension Center’s IEP as we would often have advertisements encouraging students to work as conversation partners for their conversation program. In fact, a friend of mine met his future wife by becoming her conversation partner. My roommate currently attends UCR and volunteers in the conversation partner program, and as such I have been able to meet many of the international students involved in the program.
Although I knew about the IEP and the services they offered, I had never actually been there until the day of my interview. Upon coming into the building, I noticed that the IEP served a variety of students, but I also noticed a high concentration of Japanese and Korean students. While riding the elevator up to Ms. Landon’s room, I also noticed that dorm rooms for the students were a part of this building in addition to the dorms behind the building. While I believe this is beneficial for building a community of learners with the students, I had mixed feelings because it also felt a bit isolated from the greater community of the university and town.
As I waited for Ms. Landon, I noticed the open classrooms around me. Class sizes were quite small, in both number of students and actual square footage. The rooms I saw were about the same size as the room in my apartment. However, this set up appeared to work well to serve as an intimate learning environment. Every student could see and hear the teacher and each other and the class enrollment was small enough that individual attention was possible for all students. Reviewing of assignments also appeared to be very individualized as the instructors provided feedback about previous work, common mistakes she had noticed, and tips for future assignments. Ms. Landon’s room was also as small as the other rooms I had noticed on her floor. A single row of desks lined the north and the south wall facing toward each other. From the papers up on the board, it appeared that the latest class had been focusing on the vocabulary and sentence structure for describing a person’s physical appearance and demeanor.
After settling into the classroom, Ms. Landon began to talk about herself and the program at the IEP. Ms. Landon received her Masters in TESOL at Simmons College in Boston, MA. A requirement in her program was for students to enter into a one-semester internship, but they had an option of staying in the internship for a whole year. Ms. Landon’s internship was at a local community college and she was fortunate enough to have the department chair as her mentor. This opened many opportunities for her, including having her second semester’s internship become a paid job as she took over her own class at the community college. She has also worked in Chiba, Japan teaching English. At this time, she teaches Oral Skills Development and Writing classes.
The IEP uses the Michigan Placement Test in order to place students into one of six levels (beginning is 100 level, advanced is 600 level). Students are tested during orientation and placed into a skill level according to the results. As the 100 level is rather basic, they do not always have a 100 level class offered as students do not always need it. However, they are considering changing the qualifications for each levels as some of the students who barely test into the 200 level appear to have trouble and would perhaps benefit from taking later 100 level classes. All students in the IEP must take Reading, Writing, and Grammar classes. 100-400 level students must also take Oral Skills Development while 500 and 600 level students may decide to take Oral Skills Development or another elective. Each quarter, students have competency exams administered by an institution.
When asked about a program model, Ms. Landon explained to me that there is no one model that is used. In fact, instructors have great autonomy in deciding what approach they wish to utilize, so as long as they cover the curriculum. Many instructors in the IEP have been working for many years, some as long as 20 years. Various publications have also been written by instructors in the program. As a result, the program has strong trust in the abilities of its faculty. Coordinators are assigned to oversee each subject and they meet each week to discuss the quarter and teacher evaluations. As a beginning instructor, one may be evaluated each quarter while those who have been with the program longer may only have one per year. The evaluation team is made up of another instructor, an administrator, and a coordinator. The nature of the evaluations is generally to serve as constructive feedback to further the development of the faculty.
Texts utilized in the program are quite varied. While browsing the shelves at the IEP’s bookstore, I noticed publishers such as Oxford (Person to Person, Well Read), Jamestown (Adventures, Chills, etc), Pearson Longman (Basic English Grammar, Fundamentals of English Grammar, etc), Cambridge (Writers at Work), Thomson Heinle (Basic Composition for ESL), and even workbooks produced by the IEP itself. This eclectic variety of texts reflects the varied instruction offered by the IEP. When I asked Ms. Landon about the faculty’s voice in the selection of the texts, she explained to me that an instructor could recommend a text and the program would pilot it for a year. Based upon the results of the pilot year, the program would decide whether or not to keep the book as a part of the program.
I believe that the IEP is providing adequate instruction to its students. From what I saw and heard, it appears as though instructors are free to tailor the atmosphere of their classrooms in order to deliver the curriculum in the most efficient way for their students rather than being forced to use a one-size-fits-all approach to learning. The small class sizes were also quite refreshing to me. After substituting in classes with over forty desks crammed into a room, 15 desks in a small room seemed much more manageable. The personal feeling of these classrooms ensured me that an instructor would have an easier time with including all students in discussions and activities in order to foster learning.
Overall, I feel confident that UCR’s IEP is doing a great job with the students as well as with working together with the faculty to improve instruction. The only thing I would suggest to change or modify about the program involves placement in the levels. I had asked if a student could be in multiple proficiency levels, for example, a student with strong verbal skills but weak writing skills perhaps being placed in a 400 level speaking class but only a 200 writing and grammar class. This does not happen. Instead, a student is placed in a single level. I believe it may be beneficial for some students to move up in levels for each skill accordingly. A student who is highly proficient in an area may feel bored in a course that does not challenge that skill. At the same time, if the student’s high scores in one area lifts their levels in other areas beyond their capabilities, they may struggle unnecessarily. Due to this, I believe it would benefit the students to try to split levels.
After my meeting with Ms. Landon, I am more inspired than before to work toward my goal of working at an IEP. Listening to the classes, meeting some of the students in the halls, and speaking with Ms. Landon herself was all a positive experience for me. I hope that when I am hired, I am fortunate enough to work in such an environment.
For more information on the programs offered at the IEP, click here.Labels: iep, ma tesol, site visit, ucr |
posted by miffykurara @ 1:14 PM  |
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| 2 Comments: |
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Hi, Laura,
I found your interview and observations very interesting. Do you plan to attend the meeting tomorrow at the CSUSB? Your comments will be very valuable to compare both programs. Hope you will find the job you like.
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Hi Antoaneta!
I'm glad you liked my post. Unfortunately, I won't be going with everyone on Thursday - I need to work. But I look forward to reading everyone's posts about it!
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Hi, Laura,
I found your interview and observations very interesting. Do you plan to attend the meeting tomorrow at the CSUSB? Your comments will be very valuable to compare both programs. Hope you will find the job you like.