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A. Rose Gochnour

Professor Macksoud

LIN 584: MTESOL Internship

Final Reflection

November 25, 2013

A Summer at the International Rescue Committee

In the summer of 2013, I had the opportunity to intern at the International Rescue

Committee (IRC) in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. Upon reflection this past semester,

through Blackboard journal entries and time spent in my ENG 404: Lessons in Second

Language (L2) Acquisition course, it has become very clear that my time at the IRC was

a great learning opportunity that will influence the ways that I approach L2 teaching for

years to come. In this reflection I will provide an overview of the internship experience,

address challenges and lessons learned, analyze some of my successes, and discuss

potential improvements for future teaching applications based on my internship

experience.

INTERNSHIP OVERVIEW

From June through mid-August, I spent 6-10 hours a week volunteering in-person

at the IRC. I also spent 4-6 hours working on curriculum development on my own at

home. The goal of my internship was to develop a brand new course at the IRC that

added to their previous efforts in L2 teaching in a new and more focused way. Working

with MTESOL student, Hameed, I was instructed to develop a week-long course,

consisting of four classes that prepared refugees for jobs in the cleaning industry

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(Hameed was instructed to develop lessons for the following week). The objective was to

only teach them the English that was relevant for obtaining and maintaining a cleaning

job such as, hotel room cleaning, dish washing at a restaurant, or school/office cleaning.

This meant that the classes were focused primarily on vocabulary acquisition, as well as

on skill development. That is to say, we didn’t just teach the students what a mop was, we

also demonstrated how to properly mop a floor. This course falls under the label of

teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP).

As mentioned, our students at the IRC were refugees from all over the world. We

had students from Burma, Iran, the Congo, Myanmar, among other places. The ages of

our students ranged from 17-40, with the majority being males in the 17-25 year old

range. Although originally planned to conduct the class with interpreters available, due to

budget restraints we ended up conducting the class with no interpreters and entirely in

English. The skill level of the students greatly varied. Some had reasonable experience

with speaking English, while others were illiterate even in their own language. The IRC

helped bring these students to America and works to get them financially independent

and well situated in about a three-month period; we were just one part of making this

mission possible.

In addition to working with Hameed, I worked with my supervisors Waleed and

Stephen, full-time employees at the IRC to develop the course. Their insights were

particularly valuable because they had been training refugees for work in the cleaning

industry for several years. Our main goal was to help lighten their load, and allow them to

teach more refugees at a faster pace. Waleed’s knowledge was invaluable because he

knew unusual, but important things like the fact that the colors of spray bottles and their

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corresponding rags were very important in hotel cleaning. That is to say, workers are

expected to know that you use a red colored bottle on hardwood floors as opposed to a

blue colored bottle on windows. With insights like this, we were able to develop lessons

and activities that not only taught colors, but taught the relationship between colors and

cleaning items.

In the end, we developed eight lessons that taught around 15 new vocabulary

words per lesson. Each lesson also focused on teaching cleaning skills that related to the

topic of the day, such as cleaning action words, places in the cleaning industry, cleaning

supplies, etc. Lessons consisted of signing in on a timesheet, a PowerPoint overview,

instructional videos, role-play tasks, matching game handouts, and skill demonstrations.

It took a lot of trial and error to come up with this format for the lessons, but in the end

we were able to tell what sort of activities made sense to the students and produced the

best results. After teaching the course by ourselves for a few weeks, we prepared detailed

lesson plans so that IRC volunteers could begin teaching the course each week without

our oversight.

I was fortunate in that my internship was primarily curriculum development

focused (which I needed the most practice at), but I also had the opportunity to teach the

course that I developed towards the end of my internship. This was insightful because I

was able to see first hand the way in which my lessons worked, and could work for

others. It was great to be able to review my lesson plans after teaching them.

With this overview of my assignment, timeline, students, coworkers, and

curriculum in mind, I will now go over some of the challenges we faced along the way.

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LESSONS LEARNED

During my ENG 404 class this past semester, I was able to reflect on my

experiences at the IRC and to find ways that I could have dealt with challenges better.

One of the pervading challenges I faced while developing curriculum was dealing with

opposing ideas and objectives from my two supervisors at the IRC. For example, I would

receive instructions from one about how writing should be emphasized in the course,

while the other would encourage only practical, hands-on activities. This made it so that

sometimes I spent time developing activities that ended up being cut upon further

discussion between the supervisors.

I think that this problem would have been solved if I had done a thorough “needs

analysis” with both supervisors at the very beginning of the internship. Needs analyses

are essential in L2 teaching, and more specifically in ESP teaching, because they allow

the activities to be relevant, focused, and advantageous to the learner. I certainly tried to

figure out what these needs were based on my own knowledge, but I didn’t have my

supervisors do the same. If I would have sat down and compiled a list of everyone’s

needs for the course right at the beginning, including some one representative of the

student population, I could have avoided doing unnecessary work due to

miscommunication.

Another challenge Hameed and I faced came near the end of our internship, after

weeks of hard work and preparation, none of the students ended up coming for the first

day of classes. The IRC staff seemed to have miscommunicated with the clients and in-

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terpreters. No one was really able to provide us with answers about why this was the case

and we were excused for the day without much explanation. 

This taught me a lesson about the importance of the administrative side of teach-

ing. For example, the IRC worker in charge of coordinating students and interpreters

booked all the interpreters even when he lacked certainty about whether or not the stu-

dents were for sure coming. Booking the six interpreters (who did all show up) was a big

waste of money for the IRC who runs on a tight non-profit budget. From there on out we

taught without interpreters due to this failure. 

I think this experience taught me a valuable lesson about maintaining a good atti-

tude despite set backs in L2 teaching. As a teacher or a volunteer you cannot expect to

control your students or coworkers. In times of disappointment or setbacks it is best to fo-

cus on your own accomplishments and readiness. Hameed and I were able to stay posi-

tive because we knew that we were prepared and ready if things would have gone differ-

ently. Hameed and I used this time to troubleshoot the lesson preparation and to figure

out how to make the set-up process more effective – for example printing handouts the

day before, providing pens for the class, checking the audio system before class starts,

etc. Fortunately, the following week we started classes again and had 24 students show

up on time and ready to learn.

In the future I might try to be more involved in the administrative side so that I

can have more certainty about whether or not I will be teaching and how many students

will show up. If this isn’t an option, I can at least reflect upon this experience and the

ways in which it was overcome. Similarly, I was proud that Hameed and I were able to

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stay positive and make use of our time so that we could start up strong the following

week. 

Another challenge that I faced came during the first week of classes. The class'

overall skill level was more advanced than we had anticipated, but there were still many

low-level learners. I found myself having to think on my feet as I tried to make our

planned activities more advanced, yet also making sure that the slower learners were not

feeling overwhelmed or falling behind. I am sure that this is a problem that teachers of all

kinds face, in all sorts of learning environments.

In preparing for future lessons in which the skills levels of the incoming students

are unknown, I would probably include alternate activities or lesson ideas in the case that

students are more advanced than expected. Being over-prepared is much better than hav-

ing to think up ideas in front of a class. During this first week I also noticed that the class

seemed to respond positively to the cleaning movies I showed. Watching the cleaning

videos engaged the lower-skill level students because they could visually engage, while

also engaging the more advanced students who had many questions afterward and pro-

voked good class discussions.

Mainly we just went for a balanced approach to this challenge, by creating some

activities that were catered towards the more advanced and others towards the beginners.

It also ended up being a good idea to let the more advanced students pair with the begin-

ning students so that they were there to clarify, answer questions, and to set an example

of how to perform the activities. That being said, it was also important to make sure that

the lower-level students were not simply copying or mimicking the advanced students.

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We ran into this a few times and we would separate the students during the activities and

would give the struggling student more one on one time with either Hameed or I.

SUCCESSES AND APPLICATIONS OF L2 TEACHING METHODS

As was mentioned, this course was clearly an ESP course in that it was designed

specifically to prepare students for jobs in the cleaning industry. Thus, we tried to make

every activity skill-based and relevant to the type of work that the students would be

doing outside of class. One successful idea stemmed from the IRC requirement that

students sign-in when they attend a class. I came up with the idea to make the sign-in

sheet look like a timesheet. So instead of just signing their name on a clipboard, the

students had to find their timesheet, sign-in, and include the time that they arrived.

When we took breaks the students had to sign-out and back-in, and at the end of

the day the students had to “clock-out” and obtain a supervisor’s signature. This sort of

activity was successful in transforming a mundane task into an ESP activity. The IRC

loved this idea and it was great to see the students progress through their timesheet from

day to day as the expectations became more and more familiar to them.

Similarly, in my ENG 404 class we discussed CBI (content-based instruction).

This is an L2 teaching strategy that focuses on teaching English through specific types of

content that are relevant to the learner's goals outside of class. As we discussed this topic

I felt that it related very well to the type of teaching needed at the IRC. At the IRC we

were not teaching English in a formal, grammatical way, or even emphasizing

communicative approaches. Rather, the English was supposed to enable the refugees to

be prepared to get and keep a job as quickly and for as long as possible.

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With this focus of the class, it only made sense to use cleaning-based vocabulary,

activities, and tasks as the basis of the English learning. At the time of my lesson

preparation at the IRC I didn't know I was employing a well-known teaching method, but

in reflection I can see that in many cases I was, and I believe it was a good approach for

this type of learning/teaching. 

POTENTIAL IMPROVEMENTIn my ENG 414 class we also discussed a method called Problem-Based Learning

(PBL) as an approach to L2 teaching. I didn't use this method during my time at the IRC,

but upon reflection of the lessons I put together – I think that there were ways in which

some of the activities could be modified to reflect this method. PBL focuses on providing

the class with tasks that are problem-oriented, group-based, student-centered, and that

build on the interests of the students.

At the IRC many of the activities I designed focused on a problem solving

activity, but few were group-based. I think that going back I would try to make the

activities more group-based not only because it is an effective learning method, but also

because the students, being refugees, could really benefit personally from making

connections with fellow refugees at the IRC. Although we did some role play activities,

many were individualistic in front of the class, rather than group-based.

In addition, none of the activities I proposed were very student-centered. Student-

centered learning in PBL means that the activities are predominantly carried out by the

students as opposed to the teacher, and that the students are free to direct the activities in

their own ways. I feel that the lessons were planned in a way that I spent too much time

talking. It would have been better to construct them in a way that the students could try to

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guide their own learning in a modified way. Since the classes that I constructed focused

on the shared vocational interests of the students and they all had a common end in mind

for their English purposes, I really could have been creative in the sort of PBL activities

constructed. 

In the future I will try to keep PBL approaches in mind as I plan my lessons, in

hopes that students can get more out of their learning experience and have the chance to

direct their learning, with my guidance and advice, in their own ways.

FUTURE APPLICATIONS

In conclusion, I think my internship was rich in future teaching applications. I

have submitted an application to the Peace Corps and am hoping to get an assignment to

teach English in another country for 27 months. It is very likely that the skill-level of the

people I will be teaching will be quite similar to the refugees at the IRC. In my internship

I was required to start from scratch on developing these lessons and I had to work with a

limited budget and with limited resources – just as I will in the Peace Corps.

Furthermore, I may also be assigned to teach teachers in the area that I am called

to serve. The internship really brought to life the L2 methods that I studied in my ENG

404 class, as I was able to imagine how they could have/did play out in my own teaching

experience. I feel that my ENG 404 class would have felt much more abstract or

inapplicable if I had not participated in my internship first. I feel confident that in trying

to share these methods with others I will be successful not only because of my

knowledge, but because of my ability to relate and share my own experiences in their

application or failure to do so.

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In conclusion, I am grateful for the opportunity I had to volunteer and to reflect in

great detail throughout this semester. I am hopeful that the skills that I have acquired will

be useful for years to come, whether I am teaching in a formal Peace Corps environment

or tutoring children in my neighborhood.