2nd intro-same as the first!

Hello everyone, and welcome!

If you've read the other posts below, you may be getting a sense of deja vu...yes, you have seen most of this before, now it's just easier to find!

My name is Cathie Whitmire. I teach ESL and Civics for the Hispanic American Council of Erie. Our agency serves Latinos, as well as a wide variety of immigrants and refugees from countries throughout the world.

I've been in the field of Adult Ed for 13 years, and prior to teaching at the Council, I worked with adults with multiple disabilities at the Barber National Institute.

I currently co-chair the ESL Division of PAACE (Pennsylvania Association for Adult and Continuing Education) along with our Host, Martin Senger (from the Greater Erie Community Action Committee) and Susan Adams (from the YMCA in Philadelphia). PAACE is the host for the Midwinter Conference. (Find more info about it at: www.paacesite.org)

In addition, I facilitate the NWPDC ESL Network with Martin, and am currently acting as a Teacher Leader for the Learner's Lives as Curriculum(c) initiative. I look forward to hearing about, & learning from, all of you!

Thanks,Cathie

Re-introductions and Link to Adult ESL Content Standards

I'm very happy we have decided to start a blog for adult ESL practitioners in Pennsylvania. This is a great way for us to keep the networking that happens at the PAACE MWC going through-out the year.

Here is a link to the ABLE page where you can read about how the standards were put together by & for Pennsylvania practitioners:

http://www.able.state.pa.us/able/cwp/view.asp?q=129314

Please consider downloading the document (12 pages of content, plus a helpful glossary of ESL terminology) and distributing it to your fellow teachers, tutors, students, administrators, etc. The text was written to be as clear and jargon-free as possible, while at the same time conveying what students can learn to do in English at each of the NRS levels.

Enjoy!

Keep in mind that if you test a learner in listening and speaking alone (e.g. BEST Plus), the other skill areas such as reading and writing ability may or may not be at the same level. Much depends on your individual learner's academic background in L1 [native language] and L2 [in this case English]. In our program we routinely get a writing sample at the pre-/posttest to help fill in this gap for in-house diagnostic purposes.

By the way, I'm Doug Masiroff. (ESL Specialist, Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council)

Adding Your Own Posts

Pax all!

If you would like to begin your own thread (topic), please email me (MSenger@GECAC.org) and I will invite you in as an Author.