Flavia Silvina Bonade, ISP N° 8 Adm. William Brown, Santa Fe, Argentina

In March of 2020, the coronavirus pandemic brought the educational system, as we knew it, to a halt in Argentina, as almost everywhere around the globe. All primary and secondary schools, as well as colleges and universities, had to move the bulk of their everyday activities to virtual environments. The speed and scope of such transformation has revealed overwhelming inequalities in terms of access to technology and to knowledge about technologically assisted teaching. Furthermore, a plethora of collaborative actions have been undertaken by the teaching community so as to compensate for these shortcomings and to soothe the uncertainty inherent to the situation. The field of initial English language teacher education is no exception.

As a practicum tutor in a teacher education program in Santa Fe (in the center of Argentina), I am confronted with the challenge of re-creating a whole module, which is traditionally built upon face-to-face interactions among administrators, tutors, teachers, student-teachers, and school learners, and which requires close support and feedback to student-teachers in their endeavor of learning teaching. Will the 2020 student-teachers’ field experience have to be suspended until the end of the lockdown? Our fellow TESOL teachers at primary and secondary schools are in contact with their learners and are, indeed, teaching them. There is teaching and learning going on, albeit in unknown scenarios and using until recently unforeseeable media—virtual platforms, email, messaging, printed worksheets, and even handwritten assignments. Consequently, there are opportunities for student-teachers to observe, analyze, and develop teaching projects.

Student-teachers in this practicum module first approached the “teaching-during-pandemic” scenario by conducting a survey among school TESOL teachers who had collaborated with us in the last few years. This was an online questionnaire containing 12 compulsory selection questions and some optional free-response ones. The questions were directed at finding out what pedagogic practices these teachers are currently carrying out: 1) the media and resources they are using, 2) the types of tasks they propose, and 3) the difficulties they are struggling with. We were also interested in learning about their students’ access to technology, the amount and quality of support they receive at home, and their overall responses to distance learning.

We received seven answers, which is representative of the number of schoolteachers who typically guide student-teachers in their field experience under normal circumstances. The responses are evidence of the complexity of the local distance teaching/learning situations: only 71% of these teachers’ students have regular access to internet, 2 of the teachers believe their students may not be receiving enough support at home, and the resources these teachers are using range from synchronous meetings to printed worksheets delivered to students’ homes. Some teachers reported feeling exhausted and still having the impression their work is insufficient; some others believe they are experimenting with something new and hold positive expectations about the results. When asked what sort of tasks and materials they would like to develop but cannot, because of lack of time or training, they listed interactive presentations, games, content-and-language integrated learning activities, speaking activities, and quizzes that could be answered on cell phones.

The information about these teachers’ needs and wants in terms of teaching materials is of utmost relevance for student teachers. This is because their second assignment is to develop teaching sequences that could be used in a distance teaching framework that are to be shared with the surveyed teachers, as well as with the rest of the local TESOL community. Student teachers are currently working in small groups with the purpose of planning and designing presentations and worksheets that could be used both interactively and in printed versions. The sequences are aimed to cover the topics and contents the surveyed teachers suggested: distance learning, feelings and emotions during the lockdown, comprehensive sexuality education, verbal tenses, specific vocabulary areas, and strategies to develop reading and speaking abilities. The purpose of having the same teaching sequence in different formats—digital and printed—is to enhance the opportunities of accessing knowledge for those students who have fewer resources to learn today, outside school, and thus achieve a certain degree of social justice.

The task is proving to be challenging for student teachers, who are also struggling against the constraints of the lockdown situation. They are currently working on their own from home and meet their classmates and tutor online exclusively. Their effort and commitment are samples of the daily efforts of the TESOL community to keep and strengthen the pedagogic and professional bonds between teachers and students, and among teachers themselves during these trying times. Imbued with solidarity and resilience, this practicum project is evidence that learning teaching can never be put to a halt.