Thanks to the tremendous efforts of participating faculty and support staff, our latest round of placement testing during the break has resulted in the great majority of our classes having healthy enrollments.
Congratulations to Gary, whose title has changed from "assistant professor" to "associate professor" because he has gained tenure! He has also been chosen by the faculty senate to be a co-coordinator of the college's basic skills committee. Another dept. member making major contributions to the college is Marty, who is in charge of the college's student learning outcome plan for the new school year, besides sitting on the faculty senate. Congratulations! Both Marty and Gary will also give a PD workshop this week to show colleagues from other departments how to help ESL students in their classrooms. Please join me in wishing them great success in all these endeavors as well as thanking them for representing our department well and for increasing the visibility of our dept. among the college community at large. ESL students are everywhere, not just in our dept. When the whole college recognizes this and works together to help these and other basic skills students, our campus can truly serve as a perfect venue for "Learning for Success."
In other news, A-12, A-13, and A-14 have all been turned into smart rooms with a computer/data projector setup, thanks to the support from IS, Audio/Visual, and noncredit matriculation. Traditional OHPs have been removed from these rooms, but if you need to use one, you can check in A-15 or A-19 or pre-order one from Audio/Visual. Using a block grant, we've also placed orders for new podiums for these three rooms. The floor of A-13 was cleaned during the break, but not of the other rooms. We'll continue to push for the floor cleaning for the other rooms.
The block grant will also enabled our dept. to purchase two bags of clickers, ideal for classroom use in order to engage every single student. I'll announce it when they arrive.
Attendance, particularly that in our noncredit classes, remains a challenge. Without regular attendance, student success rate will suffer. I'd encourage all of you to share practical ideas that have worked for you. Below are quite a few ideas Susana Davis, an instructor in the Evening General ESL Program in San Marcos, has just emailed me. She said that she got these from an old handout from Grossmont Adult School, but she added some of her own:
- Establish individual rapport with students and let them know that you care about their progress. During "ice-breaker," ask lots of oral questions, then have them write answers.
- Use class-building activities the first few weeks of school. Create an atmosphere of community. Assign a "classroom-job" to different rows every week. Pair up "advanced" students with "low beginners."
- Check your lessons. Are they meeting your students' needs? Are they interesting? Is the pacing adequate? Ask for students' opinions.
- Use a "to be continued" exercise at the end of class and present the conclusion at the beginning of the next class session.
- Do weekly raffles. Monday, write their names on a paper; the last day, draw names.
- Have Monday prizes for previous week's best-attendance students.
- Celebrate monthly birthdays.
- Do an ice-breaker to have students share their phone numbers, etc. to organize study groups, arrange ride-share transportation, call or tell you when they'll be absent, etc.
- Invite student-services related speakers.
- Announce end-of-semester certificates and mention/award after-quizzes awards as often as possible.
Thank you in advance for helping our students succeed in a supportive classroom community that you create or maintain this semester!
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