I attended a teacher training with enVia. Most of the people who come to teach with enVia do not have a lot of teaching experience and benefit tremendously from the curriculum and the English Coordinator’s weekly suggestions for engaging the students with the material. Among other things, we have to remember that these kids have usually been in school all day and would rather be running around the park area than sitting for two more hours.
The trainers offered a bunch of facilitation tips to help us to assess student learning and to keep the students motivated and confident about their learning abilities while also accountable for new information. Probably the hardest thing about these classes is that the students are grouped more by age than ability. As a result, I have some students that get impatient when other students repeatedly seem to fail to remember basic vocabulary. Some of this has to do with their capacity as students in general. Some of this has to do with the peer dynamics.
The workshop didn’t provide me with any new information or resources, but it made me see what was effective in our own learning dynamic. And, it made me reflect on how I can better appeal to students’ different learning styles even in a classroom where I sometimes only have chairs.
shewhodaresnothing 