Learning to Teach: The Genesis ESOL Program at Brown University

From LiteracyTentWiki

This page is dedicated to an individual session of the WE LEARN 2009 Conference.
To return to the general page of the WE LEARN Conference click here: WE_LEARN_2009_Conference

To find out more about the Adult Literacy Education Wiki, please click here Main_Page.

If you would like to get more information about how to contribute to the wiki (including this page), please click here New_Here?


WE LEARN 2009
LEARNING TO TEACH: THE GENESIS ESOL PROGRAM AT BROWN UNIVERSITY

Abstract: The Genesis ESOL teacher education program prepares university students to facilitate adult ESOL learning through observation of professionally taught classes, ongoing reflection, reading and discussion. The program has largely drawn women, as coordinators and volunteer participants. In this session, we will discuss the ways in which our observations on gender and women's learning inform our work and how learning is supported to benefit both university students and adult ESOL learners and practitioners.

Presenters: Camilla Hawthorne & Janet Isserlis

Presenters' Comments - This is the longer proposal we submitted to WE LEARN. It provides some background on the project we'll be discussing with conference participants.

The Genesis ESOL Teacher Education program provides Brown University students opportunities to observe and reflect upon adult ESOL classes taught at the Genesis Center, a community-based adult ESOL center in Providence. Brown students observe classes at Genesis, and share written observations with one another through a group wiki (a web site allowing users to edit pages and add content). Students meet weekly, engaging in a process of learning about adult education, pursuing questions that arise from their ongoing observations. Program coordinators follow up with relevant readings as questions emerge. Over the course of the year, students take on greater roles in the classrooms in which they initially participated as observers.

This process is informed by what we know about professional development, focusing on ongoing participant-driven learning, reflection and discussion. Guided group discussions are structured around Brown students’ input. The program utilizes peer learning and an iterative reflective process in order to prepare university students who will, in subsequent years, participate as teachers in other Brown-sponsored adult ESOL classes.

In this session, we discuss how the program supports learning for university students while assisting learners at Genesis. The facilitators will encourage the group to consider benefits and challenges to host sites and participating teachers-to-be in a teacher education program of this nature. Our goal is to illustrate how this approach to teacher education is replicable in other contexts, and to expand understandings of teacher education and professional development for paid and unpaid practitioners, including adult learners entering into teaching roles.

We will begin by learning of their interest in the topic in an initial round of introductions, and will encourage their questions and input throughout. Depending on the audience interest, we will focus more or less on particular elements of the teacher education work, once we've provided an overview of the program.

We will provide a written description of the program and will provide representative examples of the sorts of discussions and questions that arose through the wiki reflections and face to face meetings, and will also provide a set of resource materials developed to support students' learning through the rogram.

Engaging university students in intentional thinking about what it means to do adult education work is important to the overall development of teachers and touches on a kind of student leadership that is often overlooked when university students "do" adult education in communities. As well, a preponderance of adult learners are women, and while not the sole focus of our work, we do address issues related to women's learning as part of the teacher preparation we do with the Brown students in the program.

Camilla Hawthorne is a senior at Brown University and studies International Relations. She co-coordinates the Genesis ESOL Teacher Education Program. Janet Isserlis has worked in adult education since 1980. She works with University students engaged in adult learning and also at RI's Adult Education PDC.

Related Resources From the Session - These will download as word files:


Comments/Questions:

  • From a participant - Thanks for an informative session. I think the "open-ness" of the project (volunteers are in a program for more than a year and not expected to jump right in and do teaching, volunteers run their own weekly meetings, etc.) is probably a key reason that it works, and I am not sure many programs would give student volunteers the time to get comfortable in their placement. I think many projects think in functional terms, and so look at volunteer's work more in some sort of "work-unit" or concrete goals, and this program is commendable for the fact that it is more complex than that.
Retrieved from "http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Learning_to_Teach:_The_Genesis_ESOL_Program_at_Brown_University"