MEETING 1 DATE : Wednesday, December 3rd, 2014 (3 to 5p.m) LOCATION : Addoha high School, Lmhamid PARTCIPANTS : School manager, Supervisor, teacher trainees and one Teacher of English from School TOPIC : Communicating the Community Service Learning Project to the school representatives The meeting started with our supervisor, Mr.Laklida, introducing the project to the audience (School Manager and teacher of English). The objectives were stated as follow: • Demonstrating civic engagement values through CSL • Making Academic research/professional expertise in service of learners and vice versa • Working in cooperation and coordination with different stakeholders • Promoting both teacher trainees’ and high school students’ performance in their education environments (institutions) On the other hand, the process was thought to go through these stages: Spotting Ss’ difficulties in one/many language area(s) through need analysis--- Grouping students according to the level/type of difficulties they are facing---- setting an elaborated meeting (teacher trainees and Students and their teachers if possible) to communicate the Ss needs/expectations---- task distribution among teacher trainees’ research groups ----- devise material responding to the needs in parallel with regular cooperative reflections and monitoring + follow-up on the part of school English teachers/parents/administrators… The administration was impressed by and appreciated the project vision. Thus, they expressed their readiness to cooperate and contribute to the fulfillment of the project aims. Positive thinking and optimism were also noticed as the administration considered the least potential amount of success worth recognition. As an initiative to start acting, the administration promised to: -have the school English teachers naming the students at risk from 1 st and 2nd BAC classes the next week -set Friday afternoon as an official session for the beneficiaries -provide the logistics and equipment (rooms, OHP, Boards, multimedia class…) for the teacher trainees -ensure the Ss’ regular presence and commitment to the tasks assigned -prepare the paperwork accompanying the process Right after the meeting was up, we stood by the high school gate exchanging impressions about how the meeting went. The general tendency was positive except for the vagueness surrounding the Ss’ engagement form the administration is willing to adapt. We were truly roping to have the parents’ permission and Ss’ engagement joined together on the same format to accelerate paper work. It was also disappointing to all parties that the President of the school parents’ association wasn’t in the meeting. For that reason, we had to postpone other issues.
MEETING 2 DATE : Monday, December 8th, 2014 (10 to10:30 a.m) PARTCIPANTS : teacher trainees TOPIC : How to start proceeding with CSL
LOCATION : CRMEF
When the practicum schools were assigned to each teacher trainee, we set a meeting as previously scheduled. The whole meeting revolved around two points, need analysis and Ss’ grouping, on which consensus tapped into: A. Need analysis forms: 1) Dwelling on school English teachers’ suggested names as an initial reference 2) Devising a placement test to categorize the beneficiaries in terms of proficiency 3) Devising a diagnostic form/survey/questionnaire to elicit students’ social condition, individual learning preferences, values… B. Material devised to be literacy skills-oriented C. Students grouping to be ranging from elementary, through pre-intermediate to intermediate D. Regrouping to be performed whenever necessary (Ex: when some student(s) shows faster/slower learning pace) E. Research groups to rotate between classes F. Research groups to nominate their representatives/coordinator/spokesperson