Marsha J. Chan, CATESOL Interest Group Chair, Teaching of Pronunciation Interest Group Co-coordinator, and Website advisor, California, USA

Slam! Bam! Suddenly and with resounding repetition, the doors shut to schools and universities in response to the rising numbers of COVID-19 cases. On March 9, Northern California’s largest school district, Elk Grove Unified School District, canceled classes, and many colleges and universities throughout the state followed suit over the next few days. On March 16, residents of San Francisco and six other Bay Area Counties were ordered to stay at home and implement social distancing standards. And on March 19, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a statewide shelter-in-place mandate.

Teachers, prevented from offering face-to-face instruction, were advised to find a way to teach their students remotely. Many schools and administrators had not prepared for such a profoundly different system of education and were unable to give much support or guidance.

CATESOL to the Rescue

Even before the Governor’s stay-at-home mandate, CATESOL had already started responding to this emergency by providing free online training for teachers. CATESOL is the California Affiliate of TESOL, which has been serving anyone concerned with the teaching of English as a second or foreign language, standard English as a second dialect, or bilingual education since 1969. A dozen passionate teachers with online teacher training skills answered CATESOL President Susan Gaer’s call for support, and in just 72 hours sprang into action. Jayme Adelson-Goldstein, Suzanne Bardasz, Marsha Chan, Weina Li Chen, Ryan Detwiler, Susan Gaer, Lori Howard, Nancy Kwang Johnson, Lily Lewis, Vincent Nunez, Sylvia Ramirez, Roz Tolliver, and Margi Wald graciously gave their time to serve on the front lines helping teachers transition from face-to-face to remote instruction.

For nine straight days, from March 13 to March 25, morning, afternoon, and evening, these CATESOL coaches conducted 65 hours of interactive workshops and discussion sessions to help ESL teachers consider how their lessons and presentations can be recast for online delivery, to give suggestions for creating community and engaging students, and to reassure, encourage and support them through this new and challenging conversion.

CATESOL Fills an Important Gap

While some college and university teachers already are familiar with digital instruction through a learning management system (LMS), such as Canvas, K-12 school teachers and adult education centers often do not have LMS access or know the first thing about technology-mediated teaching. And their students may not have access to laptops or WiFi. The training that CATESOL implemented has given teachers methods and confidence to begin teaching English language learners online during our stay-at-home emergency directive.

Our colleagues learned how to use Zoom video conferencing, from the basics of audio and video use by participants to selecting the desktop or specific documents to screen share. They practiced as hosts and participants in breakout rooms, simulating the small group work that they usually have students in the class. They tried their hands at integrating a variety of apps into their instruction, such as Google Docs, Kahoot, Quizlet, Spark, and Flipgrid. They role-played limited English speaking students with low-tech skills meeting in a high-tech environment. They compared the limitations that students may face in accessing instruction remotely due to the devices that they use (computers, tablets, phones) and the problems they encounter connecting to the Internet. They learned about different learning management systems and discussed the differences between face-to-face pedagogy and remote instruction.

Participants post positive reactions

With an e-blast to our membership, announcements, and shares via social media, we received over 700 registrations and scores of “walk-ins” to the CATESOL Zoom Workshop room for coaching. Both CATESOL members and non-members zoomed in. Sixty percent of participants identified themselves as members; non-members included teachers from other states in the US as well as many other countries around the world who eagerly signed up to CATESOL’s free offer to help teachers adjust and convert their curriculum. In a survey asking if they had learned something from a session they attended, 98% of respondents chose “Yes.” Over 400 respondents took the time to write a comment on how the training helped. A sampling follows.

• Thanks very much for these workshops -- you really save lives in these times.
• Many great ideas about how to teach online and manage a classroom as well as present lessons.
• Especially liked the concept of triage and needing to limit choices and doing simple things slowly.
• Most students have little or no computer experience and limited speaking skills. I received great ideas on how to modify an online class to fit their needs.
• Super great to be able to practice as a host before having to do this with my students.
• Helped me to rethink how putting your in-class lessons online is not equal and we need to adjust.
• I’ve learned many helpful techniques to help support and engage learners in our online lesson.
• Learning from other teachers’ experiences is like “teaching gold”.
• It made me feel more confident. The possibilities are exciting.
• Thanks so much for your hard work and dedication, especially putting all of this together on such a short notice!

A selection of video recordings and ancillary materials is available to members at www.catesol.org.

April Showers Bring May Flowers

Based on the overwhelmingly positive response to this just-in-time training and coaching series, CATESOL is now organizing a virtual Spring Conference using the platform Big Marker and sponsored by our annual conference IT partners, Showgear. It will be open to everyone. As school campuses across the land are expected to remain closed for the remainder of the academic year in response to the escalating coronavirus pandemic, educators will need to gear up for the challenges of not just a temporary emergency, but long-term, distance learning. Keep your dial tuned to www.catesol.org for details about this professional development event to be held during Teacher Appreciation Week in May.

Marsha Chan, BA, MA, Stanford University, is President of Sunburst Media, ESL Professor Emerita at Mission College, textbook and multimedia author, and presenter of over 300 professional workshops. She has served the US Department of State as an English Language Specialist. As Pronunciation Doctor, she offers thousands of free videos for English language learners at youtube.com/PronunciationDoctor.