The ESLetter

I missed the Flex Day meeting of the ESLetter, which really does interest me, because I wanted and needed to attend the "Before You Retire" workshop given at the same time.  But here are the concerns that were expressed at that meeting as written up by the editor after the meeting: 

Moving forward on creating pathways for our ESL students, both credit and noncredit, to help them attain their goals. This involves two strategies that our would like our help with.

1.      Poll students at our campuses (mostly higher levels) to ascertain their goals and to find out what we can do to help them succeed. With that in mind, please try to come up with a few simply worded questions. We tried these examples at the meeting:  Do you have a career goal/plan? How do you plan to reach that goal? Do you know about CCSF certificate programs? Etc. Please send your ideas back to the list (reply all) and we’ll try to finalize the poll. (It’s possible for different campuses to have slightly different polls reflecting different situations.)

2.      Do a couple of interviews with school deans with some pointed questions about what pathways ESL students at each campus can take to connect to certificate programs offered. For example, do ESL students at JAD know about the Health Services certificates offered there? Is there a clear path for them to follow into those programs? Are all the required classes for those programs available on site? We will tentatively begin with JAD/CivCtr for this issue.

Suggestions for future issues include:

- sabbatical plans of our colleagues

- student success stories

 - retention (an ongoing problem)

- summer school ideas and issues

- technology tips

- anxiety dreams about teaching (what are yours?)

One of my  anxiety dreams about teaching is one that I have while awake.  I'm worried that a low-enrollment class will be cancelled with no substitute, and I'll have to teach another semester!