On Saturday, 9/28, eight evening teachers in San Marcos - Deidre, Elizabeth, Katrina, Kevin, Lee, Susana, Terri, and Trevyan - got together for a very productive meeting. The participants started out by sharing their news as well as their favorite classroom activities and effective practices.
Katrina shared a tip on how to help those students with a vision problem when reading their textbooks. She got a bunch of magnifying glass from a dollar store and keeps them on hand. Katrina also shared a free website at www.ESLVideo.com that she has been using to much success. Teachers can sign up for an account in order to keep their students' scores. When asked how she handled the lack of headphones in MD-229 this semester, Katrina shared that her students just brought their own ear-buds.
Deidre shared how her students have now gotten into a habit of clapping for any student who arrives in the classroom as a way to motivate their continued learning.
Susana continues her practice of putting on the board the names of her students who got an A or B on a quiz and turning them into peer tutors. She also has teams of student do classroom management chores. She plans to try a "Silent Socratic Dialog" technique where students keep exchanging their written work in pairs and each takes turns writing a question on the other's paper and writing answers to their partner's questions.
Terri shared how she enjoyed making a conversation circle where her students react to cue cards that also designate an assigned identification of another student, among other things. The added fun is having them react as if their interlocutor were someone else, as indicated on their info card.
Terri reported that she had just participated in a unique PD activity called Father Greg Boyle's Homeboy Industries Field Trip in LA. Everyone agreed that Father Boyle's success in turning the former gangsters around result from his sense of mission, his ability to identify with them, to serve the needs of the ex-convicts, and to give them the value and the experiences they desire as they try to break away from their past lives.
Which was a great segue to a brainstorming session about how best to make our students feel welcome from the get-go, to fix the situation where they don't know how to create a Palomar password, and to celebrate their learning achievements at the end of a semester with their family and loved ones.
The eight participants had very big plans for our evening students. The first week of the spring semester, and hopefully each semester after that, we will have a "welcome table" outside of A-19 for the first week of the semester. ESL tutors will be utilized to man this table from 4 to 7:00 pm Monday to Thursday. Students can receive a form that starts with a brief welcome message and is followed by a checklist of things to take care of, such as Palomar ID number and Palomar password. There will be instructions to set up one's password, and the tutor on duty can actually show students inside A-19 how to set up their Palomar password. On the back of the form will be a campus map to indicated where students can park, among others. Trevyan volunteered to draft this "first impression" form. It was suggested that we can have textbook lists and other helpful info sheets on the table, too.
As part of this welcoming atmosphere, the planned English Learners Friday workshop series should start right away in the first week of the semester, and the staff should conduct an orientation which includes how to get a password.
At the opposite end, when a semester closes, we will combine noncredit classes within a program - 4:30 program vs. 7:00 program - and run a "family night." The 4:30 classes can use A-18, but a decent-size room for 7:00 classes still needs to be determined and secured. It was decided that this grand finale will take place on the respective finals day for each program. Students are encouraged to invite and bring in their family members for the potluck event. Those receiving the noncredit completion certificates as well as the program-wide "best student" certificates will be honored by their teachers in front of everyone. A book exchange across levels could also be happening during this event. Another added benefit is for the families to see their students' success as well as the value of education. Hopefully, some of the family members will want to sign up for our classes, too.
All eight colleagues agreed to be the committee for organizing this family night. There will be much coordination and organization work to do, but they all felt good that after years of talking about such desires, changes are finally on the way, and they are proud to be the agents of these changes.
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