[Bestplus] FW: my trainees

[iris.broudy@SDH.state.ma.us]

For some reason this didn't seem to go through.  I'm trying again. 

>  -----Original Message-----
> From: 	broudy, iris  
> Sent:	Thursday, August 11, 2005 9:27 AM
> To:	Dori McCormack (E-mail)
> Cc:	BEST Plus list serve (E-mail)
> Subject:	my trainees
> 
> Dori, this is pretty scary, and if it is representative of people who go
> through our trainings, I think we need to take a serious look at who
> should be trained, what kind of followup is necessary, and at the training
> itself.  Of course, we can discuss all this at the meeting next month.  
> 
> As you know, Toni Atmore has required that all her people be observed
> doing practice tests.  What I've seen is shocking.  Matt Roman was
> paraphrasing, adding his own language, asking different questions, totally
> undermining the reliability of the test.  I don't think I could have been
> clearer during the training that the administrator must say only what is
> on the screen.  It's easy enough for him to change this behavior, now that
> he's been reminded, but assuming that he will take the limitations
> seriously. I won't sign off on him until I observe him again.
> 
> But use of the rubric is another story. Linda Gamache came over on
> Tuesday.  She was giving 4's (4's!!!) in language complexity for answers
> that were at best 2's--maybe even closer to 1.  Why?  "Well, he sounded
> like he really understood.  He was so self-assured."  The odd thing was
> that she was studying the rubric for the warmups, taking forever to give
> 2-1-3 for one-word answers, then seemed to abandon the rubric totally as
> the test progressed.  
> 
> In general, I'm finding that many of our trainees have a difficult time
> distinguishing language structures:  clauses, subordination, prepositional
> phrases, etc.  They seem to react to how much language they're getting or
> even how smoothly the answer is delivered.  This leads me to question
> whether we should be training non-ESOL teachers, who may or may not even
> be administering the test very much.  You know some programs tend to send
> the whole staff for these trainings. Perhaps it should be limited to those
> who will be administering the test regularly.  And if some of those do not
> have the linguistics background to use the rubric accurately, it's going
> to mean a lot of followup tech assistance--or adding a grammar piece to
> the training.  (I'm doing a mini grammar workshop at the pre-release
> center in the next couple of weeks.  I'll let you know when it's set up.)
> 
> 
> The thing is that there's no way right now, as the trainings are set up,
> to determine if a trainee is truly getting it. Having them score tests on
> a video--post-training--would be one solution.  Having an experienced
> trained administrator observe them doing practices would be even better,
> but I don't know how practical that would be for SABES.  Maybe there
> should be a "test" segment during the training, after the scoring
> practice.  
> 
> At any rate, all this has been really eye-opening.  I'll keep you posted
> on the status of the trainees here at the jail.  
> BTW, do you want me to send you the eval. forms (from the training) now,
> since I can send  the registration forms directly to CAL? 
> 
> Thanks, Dori.  Take care.
> 
> Iris
> 
> P.S. I'm sending this out to the whole list so that we can start thinking
> about some of these issues before the meeting Sept. 12. 
> 
> Iris L. Broudy
> ESOL Instructor/Programs Dept.
> Hampden County Sheriff's Department
> 627 Randall Road
> Ludlow,  MA  01056
> (413) 547-8000  ext. 2468
> Fax:  (413) 583-3099
> iris.broudy at sdh.state.ma.us
> 
>