[Bestplus] Your feedback needed (referring participants for TA)

Wed Jun 2 17:14:31 EDT 2004

This issue came up again last Friday here at the NE training. Stacey was
the "official" facilitator/trainer, and Andrea, Marilyn, Gerry, Susan,
Iris and myself were the co-facilitators. 

We had two participants we questioned about giving the certificate to:
1 - arrived 15 minutes late in the morning, and came back 30 minutes
late from lunch;
2 - a practitioner who is very new to ABE and had no ESOL background,
and seemed to be unsure about different items of language complexity
(for ex, prepositional phrase, etc).

Long story short:  
Stacey took the first person aside and asked him to do a practice
administration with her so she could get a sense of how he was doing
with the rubric, the administration, and the overall testing situation.
Based on that, we decided to grant him his certificate after consulting
together; we also took time to talk with him and share the concern over
the time situation. However, we did feel that he still had enough
ability to competently administer the test to students.
For the second person, the co-facilitator who had worked with him felt
like he needed more practice but with that, and a stronger background in
ESOL/English structure, he would be ok. When we gave him his certificate
I spent some time with him and told him that I was strongly recommending
that he do at least 20 administrations for practice, and that I would
work with him (TA) on any issues around the rubric, language structure,
etc. I also told him I planned to call his program director so she can
help him by overseeing practice administrations, support for language
structure, etc. I plan to follow up with him as well.

>From our experience last Friday, I must say it is somewhat challenging
to think about whether or not the training facilitator would be
comfortable - both professionally and personally - to make those kinds
of decisions, particularly on the spot. Even as the SABES contact, it is
a tough call. We were somewhat "fortunate" in that we were several
people and Stacey and I could pull those folks aside without
interrupting the training, or creating an uncomfortable situation for
those people. I see it as somewhat more challenging in a situation with
16 participants and a single trainer.

I wonder if we've had some feedback from the CAL folks on this:  how do
they handle situations we're trying to address? I realize that they
don't hand out certificates, but their trainers do have to sign that the
participants received the training. Do they have some kind of a
"trainer's guide" for helping to make these decisions? 

Janet

Janet S. Fischer
Associate Coordinator
Northeast SABES (System for Adult Basic Education Support)
Northern Essex Community College
45 Franklin Street, Lawrence, MA 01840
Tel: (978) 738-7307,  Fax: (978) 738-7115
jfischer at necc.mass.edu 

-----Original Message-----
From: bestplus-bounces at lists.literacytent.org
[mailto:bestplus-bounces at lists.literacytent.org] On Behalf Of Carey Reid
Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 8:08 AM
To: Bestplus at lists.literacytent.org
Cc: maria at alri.org; steve at alri.org; suem at qcc.mass.edu; Bower, Carol;
sgabb at bristol.mass.edu
Subject: [Bestplus] Your feedback needed

Hello all,

We would like your feedback on some new policies we'd like to put into
play.

Based on our first few trainings, ACLS and SABES would like to tighten
up requirements for BEST+ trainees so they are completely qualified to
do test administrations.  As you'll recall, we've taken some steps
already by developing a
boilerplate paragraph to use when recruiting trainees; that paragraph
underscores CAL's SPL 9-or-better requirement and stresses the need for
punctuality and so forth.  However, based on some problems with computer
facility that surfaced at a couple of trainings, we want to add the
following line, or something like it, to the boilerplate paragaph:
ADMINISTERING THE BEST PLUS REQUIRES THAT THE ADMINISTRATOR HAVE A
COMFORTABLE LEVEL OF FACILITY WITH COMPUTERS; THAT IS, SHE/HE MUST BE
ABLE TO USE A KEYBOARD AND OPERATE A MOUSE WITH RELATIVE EASE [NOT IN
ALL-CAPS].

We would also like to add a section to the signin sheet for you, as 
trainers, to note any difficulties a particular trainee might have
exhibited which the regional CAC would need to follow up on.  E.g., if a
trainee has a lot of difficulty with scoring, you would note this so
that the CAC could contact that person and work with her or him further.
This approach would allow you to hand out certificates (and avoid the
awkwardness of NOT handing one out) and still alert SABES so that
remedial action can be taken.

What do you think of these ideas?  Would you approach any of the above
differently?  Is there anything you would add or change, including
addressing problems that you've noticed which are not covered in the
above?

All contributions are welcome.  We will put the final version of these
policies into place at the end of the week.

My best,

Carey Reid
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