Peace Corps volunteers are American citizens who commit to a 27-month program of training and experience to support development in countries that invite them. Prior to evacuation due to Covid-19, there were nearly 2,700 TEFL volunteers in over 30 countries. Most countries hosting volunteers prefer TEFL teachers who meet global professional English teaching standards. Typically, though, volunteers have good general skills but may lack specific skills, which is often the case in TEFL, where most volunteers have little experience in teaching English. Therefore, ongoing training is essential. The Peace Corps TEFL Certificate, which is externally validated by the Center for Applied Linguistics, is comparable in training content to the Cambridge CELTA certificate or the TESOL Core Certificate Program (TCCP). However, the Peace Corps’ TEFL Certificate program includes 24 months of supervised teaching experience, whereas the other certificates do not, which makes it a competitive credential.

This article explores the Peace Corps TEFL Certificate Program training elements, the skills it is appropriate to train volunteers on, and how the volunteers sharpen their skills to prepare them for their service as effective teachers.

A Stairway of TEFL Certificate Training Continuum

Preparing TEFL volunteers to teach starts three months before they join their host countries. The training continuum can be represented as a set of steps or stairways progressing steadily from the Pre-Departure to the Close of Service (see Figure 1). The model is helpful in the way that it takes generalists from one step to the next with on-going assessments that establish and support participants’ professional development. The idea that the training continuum is like six steps rising upwards shows us the structure of the program and how it is divided over the twenty-seven months of on-going learning and experience.

Figure 1

TEFL Certificate Training Events

The Pre-Departure training, which is offered online while the invitees are still in the US, gives invitees great opportunities to gain general ideas about teaching in their country of service and provides them with helpful teaching skills and classroom strategies to become effective TEFL teachers. For example, the grammar self-assessment is a low-stakes way for invitees to learn what they already know.

Then, the Pre-Service Training (PST) covers intensive training sessions comprised of theoretical as well as practical components. Those sessions set the theoretical foundation for the TEFL Certificate Program and consist of six competencies (see below). There are several performance indicators for each competency which are addressed through a combination of training sessions and evaluated through a schema of written assignments or staff teaching observations.

The In-Service Training is a key component of the continuum to enable volunteers to acquire new skills and provide explanation of some of the teaching situations they will come across during their first few months of teaching practice. Overall, it enables them to develop their effectiveness in the classroom.

The Mid-Service Training (MST) covers administrative, safety and security and health sessions. It is an opportunity for volunteers to look back over a year spent in the field and forward to the next year. Additionally, as stated by John Meisenbacher (2018), at mid-service training, “each volunteer also had time to share something they are doing to help exchange ideas and inspire new ideas for the second year” (para. 6).

Throughout volunteers’ service, the Communities of Practice (CoPs) are mandatory. They are great intersections of theoretical and practical teaching experiences that offer opportunities for both volunteers and their local counterparts to increase their teaching capacities. The training volunteers receive in PST is helpful. However, there are some aspects of host-country educational culture that are crucial to student learning that volunteers might not be aware of yet, which may thwart efforts to communicate effectively to their learners. CoPs help to bridge this gap in training. There is also a constant exchange of experiences in the CoP meetings, which are held weekly for two hours. Both volunteers and their counterparts share ideas about how to motivate students and tactics for handling large class sizes. Peace Corps volunteers often share information such as English songs related to topics the students are learning and tips for idioms or pronunciation. Other aspects covered during CoPs are how to best teach and increase retention on functional language and English grammar concepts. Overall, CoPs are spaces for respectful discussions for professional development and becoming more effective English teachers. This model of CoPs fits well with the theory developed by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (Smith, 2003, 2009) who state that CoPs are formed by people who get together to learn from one another.

Close of Service (COS) prepares volunteers for life after Peace Corps. Sessions are related to options and opportunities after Close of Service. The TEFL Certificates are issued by Peace Corps in Washington DC and are typically awarded in a ceremony in-country before returning to the US. Because of the two years of supervised teaching experience, returned volunteers are often sought in K-12 settings and private language centers.

Key Competencies in the TEFL Certificate Curriculum Development

The training curriculum revolves around six key competencies which are intertwined. They aim to scaffold TEFL Certificate participants, either as invitees, trainees or volunteers, to learn theories about language teaching, practice techniques to acquire necessary skills for their service. Below is an outline of these competencies and their technical sessions.

Competency 1: Language Teaching Knowledge and Skills

• Language Awareness
• Methodology & Grammar Manual Self-Assessments
• Demystifying Grammar
• Functions & Notions
• General Language Teaching Skills
• How Languages are Learned
• Approaches and Methods
• Applied Second Language Acquisition
• Teaching Specific Language Skills
• Listening
• Speaking
• Reading or Vocabulary
• Writing
• Pronunciation
• Oral Skills Lesson Reflection
• Textual Skills Lesson Reflection
• Designing Communicative Grammar Lesson

Competency 2: Community relations

• Analyzing & Responding to Cross-Cultural Situations
• Crossing Educational Cultures
• Building Good School Relations
• Blended Pedagogies
• Developing & Maintaining Counterpart Relations
• Co-Teaching, Co-Planning, Co-Adapting Reflection
• NNESTs & NESTs Working Together
• Fostering Communities of Practice
• Implementing a Teacher
• Planning & Evaluating Community Engagement
• Community Assessment for English

Competency 3: General Teaching Skills & Knowledge

• General Classroom Strategies
• Successful Teachers = Successful Students
• Your First Class
• Student Centered Teaching
• Feedback & Error Correction
• Gender Equitable Teaching
• Critical Thinking
• Classroom Management Strategies
• Classroom Management Tips
• Setting Classroom Culture
• Large Classes
• Classroom Management: Interactions & Transitions
• Classroom Management Menu For Practicum
• My Approach to Classroom Management
• General Differentiation
• Multiple Proficiency Level Classes
• Differentiation for Specific Audiences
• Students with Special needs
• Teaching Young Learners
• Culturally Responsive Teaching

Competency 4: Curriculum, Lesson planning, and Materials Design

• Lesson Planning and Design
• Lesson Design Self and Peer Assessment
• Needs, Task & Community Assessment
• Materials Development & Curriculum Planning
• Materials Design
• Adapting Lessons
• Curriculum Design
• Limited Resources

Competency 5: Assessment

• Assessment Concepts

• Formative and Summative Assessment
• Rubric Design
• Analyze a Standardized Test to then provide Test Preparation. or Test Anxiety Reduction

Competency 6: Teaching practice, Observation and Debriefing

• Teaching Proficiency index observations
• Peer Observation & Debriefing
• Formative Mutual Teacher Observation Reports
• Self-Evaluation of Teaching Progress
• Reflection on Changes in Teaching

Conclusion

This paper has explored the Peace Corps TEFL volunteer training through the TEFL Certificate Program. The program is well-structured, and the training components are geared towards the needs of generalists with little or no teaching experience to be effective in their service. It sums up the learning process that TEFL trainees and volunteers go through in order to meet the global standards for TEFL teachers. The TEFL Certificate enables Peace Corps to provide a unique and rigorous training to volunteers that offers opportunities to gain new skills related to teaching, and lifelong learning.

References

Meisenbacher, J. (2018, October 21) Mid-service training. https://johnsnextstep.blogspot.com/2018/10/mid-service-training.html

Smith, M. K. (2003, 2009). Jean Lave, Etienne Wenger and communities of practice. In The encyclopedia of pedagogy and informal education. Retrieved October 2020, from www.infed.org/biblio/communities_of_practice.htm