By now, first-time ITAs have found their footing in classrooms across campus; however, before the school year began, they had many questions and concerns. At the university-wide ITA orientation that took place just prior to the opening of the fall term, I took time to learn what those concerns were. Sitting at large, round tables, each group of incoming ITAs compiled their queries onto a piece of poster paper. Afterward, experienced ITAs sat with each group, answering their questions and allaying many of their fears.

Flash forward to the first day of the ITA Preparation / Classroom Communication class in the fall. Many of the same individuals present at the orientation are now sitting around the table in the center of the classroom. “Remember these?” I ask, spreading the papers around. Smiles and curious glances replace furrowed brows. Several ITAs point in recognition to what they themselves wrote. At this moment, the ITAs realize that this class requires their participation as agents―they would not be lectured to or treated as objects or empty vessels that I would attempt to fill with knowledge. In fact, in this learner-centered course, the ITAs take center stage each week to lead a discussion based on these preterm concerns.

FREIRE’S EMPOWERING, STUDENT-CENTERED PEDAGOGY

Inspiration for this activity comes from Paolo Freire, a monumental figure who helped people of the world discard yokes of domination through education. In his best-known work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire advocated a student-centered way of teaching that allows for dialogue between students and teachers. This dialogue serves as the basis of lessons whose topics are initiated by the students’ concerns so that a deeper learning may take place. This dialogue is not Socratic, where the teacher already has the answers and leads students to said answers by guiding them with questions. Instead, this is a dialogue that seeks the truth of experience, and because the teacher cannot have a complete picture of the variety of experiences that exist, the teacher serves as a facilitator. This kind of true dialogue, as Freire (1999) saw it, cannot exist without “love [as] commitment to others” (p. 70), “humility” (p. 71), “faith in humankind . . . in their power to make and remake” (p. 71), “hope” (p. 72), and “critical thinking” (p. 73). ITAs teach our institutions’ undergraduate populations, and we, as educators, have the responsibility to offer them learner-centered activities. So, with the humility to step out of the spotlight, I placed my faith and hope in the ability of these ITAs to actively engage in our weekly discussions as leaders and participants.

SETTING UP THE PROJECT

To prepare for this activity, I began by compiling all of the ITAs’ concerns from the beginning of the school year and arranging them into themes. This term’s topics included

• transcending the language barrier
• relating to students, part 1: approachability, students’ expectations of ITAs, understanding students’ accents
• relating, part 2: motivating students, effectively handling student behavior problems, what to do when a student applies pressure
• teaching, part 1: preparing lessons, staying ahead of the new material, dressing for success
• teaching, part 2: am I teaching well?, grading, answering students’ questions
• self-reflection on spoken English improvement: What is the SPEAK test? What have we, as ITAs, done so far to prepare for the test, both in and out of class? How can we notice a difference in our speech? In what ways will/should we prepare for the SPEAK test?
• relating to faculty and staff: how they help us, how we help them, how to cultivate a good relationship with them

Next, I clarified the instructions for the assignment. I explained that each week, there would be a class discussion based on a theme that was of interest to the ITAs who attended the ITA orientation before the start of fall term. The entire class was responsible for reading or viewing videos so that they could participate in the discussion.

The discussion leader’s task was to read through Colorado State University’s page on Focusing Discussions. I chose this source because its primary audience is teachers, and the information is clear and succinct. Then, leaders had to follow the guidelines in the rubric. Points were awarded for the following areas:

• Time management: full points for the leader who spends most of the time facilitating rather than lecturing.
• Background knowledge and context: full points for demonstrating understanding of the materials the class read in preparation for the discussion (by means of a summary).
• Expanded knowledge: full points for introducing related information from a variety of sources (separate from what everyone read)
• Adherence to and unpacking of the topic: full points for adhering to the topic, exploring it in sufficient depth, and summarizing the discussion periodically
• Managing personalities: full points for having as many people participate in the discussion as possible
• Tying it all together: full points for a smooth conclusion to the discussion by means of summarizing, posing a question for further reflection, and/or looking to the future

In addition to doing the assigned readings or watching the assigned videos, leaders also had to interview someone for more information and/or find supporting materials in the form of an article, video, podcast, or blog posting in order to have sufficient background knowledge of the topic, as well as to cite these sources during the course of the discussion.

Leaders had 10 to 20 minutes to lead the discussion, depending on how many discussion leaders there were during that class period. If there was more than one, leaders could coordinate with each other in order to make the discussions more streamlined.

Each leader was supposed to briefly summarize the material that everyone read (or watched), add information about what they learned, and ask thought-provoking questions, making an effort to involve the entire class in speaking. The class could be divided into small groups, or leaders could manage the discussions as an entire class.

The goal of these discussions was to unpack the discussion topics and to get as many people speaking as possible. This was worth 10 percent of the students’ final grades and was evaluated using the rubric mentioned above.

The final contribution that I made was to provide supporting material for each of the themes and their subtopics on our course management system. For example, for the discussion entitled “Transcending Language Barriers,” the ITAs read two articles. The first article, by Bresnehan and Cai (2000), focused on the experiences and qualities of successful ITAs. In the second article (Pai, n.d.), the author described what she did to become more intelligible for her students even though she came to the United States already speaking English extremely well. As you can see, the bulk of the preparation for this project is done at the front end, but once these pieces are in place, the teacher can sit back, listen, and evaluate.

THE DAY OF THE DISCUSSION

To emphasize the importance of the ITAs as discussion leaders and participants, I found it most useful to physically separate myself from the ITAs, allowing them to sit around a table in the center or move their desks into a circle without me. Sitting outside of the circle allowed me to enjoy the flow of the discussion and allowed the leader to focus on his or her classmates. My only responsibility as facilitator on the day of discussion was to evaluate the leader’s performance using the grading rubric and to give constructive comments. Principal among the comments I made are those that involve pronunciation and presence. In particular, I might address how the leader could use tone to introduce new information (see Pickering, 2001), the importance of phrasal stress (emphasizing key words using a higher pitch and longer vowel length), how to pause effectively, how to speak more loudly, how to use eye contact to draw the participants’ attention, and so on.

By sharing the responsibility of addressing these topics with the ITAs, they enjoyed not only more speaking practice but also a practical dialogue regarding their concerns. With the variety of majors, nationalities, and experiences inherent within each discussion group, the ITAs benefited greatly. I contributed information regarding each topic and the discussion leaders contributed theirs, all while deepening our collective knowledge by eliciting the knowledge and experience from the other ITAs. This activity serves to empower the ITAs as actors, or agents of their own learning. Because they excelled in this practical experience, the ITAs were not the only ones to benefit from the discussions; as the director, I, too, learned much from them.

REFERENCES

Bresnahan, M. J., & Cai, D. H. (2000). From the other side of the desk: Conversations with international students about teaching in the U.S. Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, 1(4), 65-75. Retrieved from EBSCO Host.

Freire, P. (1999). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum.

Pai, A. (n.d.). Adapting to the American classroom: Evolution of an international teaching assistant. In Teaching and learning. Retrieved from www.units.muohio.edu/celt/students/adapting.pdf

Pickering, L. (2001). The role of tone choice in improving ITA communication in the classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 35, 232-254.

Lara Wallace, a lecturer and the ELIP Pronunciation Lab coordinator in Ohio University’s Department of Linguistics, has her MA in linguistics and is a PhD candidate in cultural studies of education. Her research interests include pronunciation, oral communication, CALL (computer-assisted language learning), and ITAs. She is investigating the ITA experience in the oral communication classroom and using CALL to promote learner autonomy.