Minutes for department meeting of October 11, 2005

In attendance: Tracey Ellis, Janet Harclerode; John Hoover, Sharon Jaffe, Emily Lodmer, Judy Marasco, Melody Nightingale, Toni Randall, Kathy Sucher, Barbara Schelbert, and Stefanie Thiele.

  1. We briefly discussed the goals and plans of our outreach group (aka Skybox). The group (Kathy, Sharon, Emily, and Tracey) plans an outreach event for program coordinators and students from area high schools and adult schools in the spring (March 31, 2006) and fall. We discussed the need to get information that will help us address any special needs of these students that may not be addressed by our current curriculum, i.e., the possibility of developing a bridge course.
  1. Janet discussed some of her concerns that came up in the Preventing Sexual Harassment Workshop, especially of concern is what to do if a student complains that a faculty member doesn’t like students of a certain background (e.g., race, religion). According to Sherri Lee-Lewis and Pat Brown, the department chair must report this type of complaint to Human Resources. Department members were concerned about how this type of complaint would be addressed and the ramifications for faculty. The consensus was that instructors should be urging students to come to them with concerns. A statement to this effect should be written in all of our course outlines. Emily also suggested having a form that students could fill out to give feedback to their instructors if they have any concerns. Toni suggested that the department should develop a procedure for addressing this type of concern. Please see AR 3121 (starting on page 25) for the district’s policy; see Janet if you’d like copies of the state regulations.
  1. Bea Magallon summed up the Student Equity Report into a smaller document, which Janet distributed at the meeting.

The ESL Department is addressing several of the suggestions outlined in the report:

  • Meetings to discuss the Student Equity Report and formulate strategies for improving student success and retention.
  • Use of Assessment Center data in projecting needs for basic skills offerings
  • Culturally relevant and theme-based curriculum. Please note that if anyone would like to offer a theme-based course, let us know so that we may tag it as such in the course listings.
  • Promotion of student-centered learning environments
  • Investigation of success rates in short-term classes during the fall and spring semesters
  • Faculty involvement in presenting the concept of tutoring as a support for students rather than a last resort for students in trouble
  • Review of policies and practices of tutoring labs
  • Strategies for encouraging students to form study groups and improve their note-taking and time management skills.
  • Encouragement for faculty to post assignments on eCompanion or their class website
  • Frequent feedback so that students have a clear idea of how they are doing in their classes
  • Exam during the first week on prerequisite topics to alert students of skills they need to improve on to be successful in their current course.
  1. We discussed the general concerns related to how well 21A/B are preparing students for English 1. In spite of the data we have showing that our students are generally successful in English 1, we feel that many of our students are not adequately prepared for English 1 and that 2 hours and 40 minutes of instruction for 36 weeks is not sufficient time for students to prepare for English 1. Several ESL 21A/21B instructors met with English 21A/B instructors in September to discuss this challenge. ESL students have far more language related issues (sentence structure, basic vocabulary, reading comprehension) than the students in English classes . Since it is doubtful that the CC or the International Education Program would support making 21A and 21B a 5 or 6-unit course, we need to look at other alternatives. At this point instructors feel they must work a lot on syntax when they should be working on essay-writing. We would like to be able to recommend our support courses, but often students are not aware of the severity of their grammar until they get back their first graded writing assignment. We have agreed to try to offer late start support courses (to start with 16A, 16B, 20A, and 20B) especially to serve the needs of students who have placed in 21A and 21B but still have many sentence-level writing concerns. After assessing the results of a diagnostic test they give to students, instructors could highly recommend pertinent courses (16A for nouns and articles, 16B for verbs, 20A and 20B for sentence-level grammar including clauses, word forms, conditionals, paraphrasing/ embedding). If these courses are offered online or as hybrids or if they begin week 4, students would not have any excuses for not taking these courses. Since 20A and 20B have already been approved for distance education, we can begin offering them in the spring fully online. Next week Janet will take 16A and 16B to the Curriculum Committee for an update in distance ed approval.
  2. We discussed the possibility of offering workshops on a given topic (topic sentences, thesis statements, run-on sentences, etc). Faculty could do this in lieu of office hours or use it for FLEX. Anyone interested in offering a workshop, please let Janet know so that she may make a schedule to give to Counseling and International Education.
  3. Barbara Schelbert raised her concern that ESL students need to have lab time as the developmental English students have. Several instructors have requested lab time for their students (especially for pronunciation and reading). AA scheduled these instructors in the lab. However, Barbara thinks that the lab should be available for drop in. Janet said she would follow up by finding out what time the lab is available for student drop in, and by talking to Espy Bolivar-Owen about our sharing of the ML Lab.
  4. We briefly discussed the status of ESL 25. Sharon thinks it is a useful course if the students who enroll need just a bit more practice before English 1. We agreed that ESL 25 should be accepted for the AA degree just as English 22 is. We will need to take this to curriculum when we revise all of our courses before next year’s program review. Ultimately, English 1 will be required for the AA degree anyway.
  5. The 8-week 21A and 21B courses seem to be attractive to many students, but the general consensus by faculty is that these short courses are only appropriate for the most motivated and prepared of 21A students. We should be advising students accordingly.
  6. Faculty distributed the drafts of SLOs that were written for ESL 10, 11A, 11B, and 21A. In our next meeting (October 25) we will discuss these.
  7. Janet handed out a form used by the Math Department for evaluating faculty. If faculty in ESL would like to use the Math Dept’s form or adapt it to ESL, we may decide to do so as a department. This will be discussed further at a future dept meeting.

Next meeting: October 25, 11:15 in ESL 103. The focus will be SLOs and curriculum.