From July 15– August 12, Lisa Uribe visited Cochabamba, Bolivia as part of NC POA’s annual teacher in residence program. She is an adult ESL teacher trainer at Wake Technical Community College and primarily worked at Centro Boliviano Americano in Cochabamba. Her mission was to introduce formative assessment for ESL /EFL in the classroom so that assessment becomes more organic to the lesson. Formative assessment also encourages students to check their own progress. She also introduced new games and dialogue journals inside the classroom.
Some of the games for pronunciation were re-constructing a dictation, pronunciation journey, and a game similar to Connect Four. “Making Tracks”, which focuses on syllable stress in words. This game has students working against each other to complete “tracks” of 4 or more words which match the stress pattern identified by rolling a die. These are examples of how to embed engaging activities into pronunciation instruction and practice.
Angus Bowers, another Wake Tech teacher trainer, traveled during the same time as Lisa but to the CBA’s at Santa Cruz and La Paz. The Santa Cruz CBA has many students that later travel to Miami and is a very state of the art facility.
In La Paz, Angus Bowers reviewed CBA’s HR policies for teachers and also helped La Paz with their curriculum overhaul. He also got to visit other language schools in La Paz.
Cultural excursions included visiting nun cloisters, hiking in some frighteningly narrow paths, and experiencing exotic dishes such as armadillo soup and piche. Virginia Freed-man was also able to travel to the Anglo American high school
In Oruro and give EFL work-shops that are equivalent to CEU’s in the United States.
Having two teachers in residence made the trip more enjoy-able for the teacher themselves and helped NC POA make new connections.