Hello ESL Faculty,

Thanks for meeting your engagement with your ESL level faculty and sharing resources, ideas, and materials. Apologies for the delay while I gather a few answers and follow up on topics. I'm sending this update to share all content from all meetings with everyone, especially if there was a time conflict. For transparency, the times of meetings were based on majority availability. Of course, you are always welcome to meet with me 1:1 if you have any questions or want to hear more about a topic. Please reach out if you'd like to meet.

Most of the items covered in these meetings were universal, so I am including them all together:

Requests:

New Holly Request: a Literacy class for true lit students. Currently, there are about 50% literacy level and 50% true level 1 students in the class. The need to run a literacy class at New Holly is high! If we can accommodate this request, it would be a great help to those students and the instructors managing the two groups in one classroom. (Space & budget ~ new dean)
PD Requests for future meetings/PD workshops: Norming sessions for writing and assessment. Also, placement norming. Faculty would like to participate in norming workshop to see writing from different student populations at all the levels to better understand what each level looks like for incoming students and exiting students.

We can all help with this by asking students if we can use their writing samples (names & identifying features removed) to share in the Canvas site to build a repository for samples. PD day or first day of the quarter might be good times to run a workshop on this! UPDATE: Kris will be leading a norming session in Fall.
Question about placement norming ~ Kris has sent out an email addressing this request, and she is planning to conduct norming. Thanks, Kris, for your swift response to that request!
Fall Schedule is coming out next week as PTers are getting offers from other colleges and need to plan accordingly.

Payroll / Pay Concerns:

A reminder was shared to check your paychecks to ensure you have been paid for your additional work.
Please note level meeting payments are being processed by Teresa. The hours for this quarter were turned in 5/22 directly following the last level meeting.
CTCLink - request person leave day. HR/Payroll will add it; PTers use or lose per quarter. There is no "balance" of these hours in CTCLink.
If you're going to be out, please let office staff know so they can pass along to students who attend regardless.
Questions for payroll should be directed to Teresa and/or dean.
Per Teresa ~ For submitting sick leave time: Part timers: 4.8 hours per day/ Full timers 6 hours per day
PD Day pay is not processed through the office but through district, so please contact payroll@seattlecolleges.edu or Mayra (as PD Day Dean) if you think you were not paid. It takes time to process this (about a month).

Reminders:

Level moves ~ Again, thanks to Kris for clarifying new student level moves. Contact the dean and Kris. More to come from dean about process for repeating levels.
Preference forms ~ Please list ALL of the classes you are interested in teaching even if this means a second page.
CASAS MAKE-UP tests! If you have a student who can't attend on your Casas date, please check with the student to see if they can attend another day/night and work with faculty to arrange alternatives to get everyone tested. More info to come from dean.
Good practice: When offering Casas tests, starting the tests earlier or offering a large window to arrive to test has been proving to help get students to campus to test. One teacher offers the window for night students to arrive any time from 4:00-6:30. This is helpful for those students who: take the bus & don't want to commute after dark, students coming from work can test & go straight home for dinner, students who work odd hours/late evening shifts, students who deal with childcare/elder care and can get help at certain hours, etc.

Here are few resources & issues we shared in ESL 1 & 2:

Akemi shared textbooks that correspond to our reading levels in ESL. This PowerPoint is available in the TS Canvas site.
Akemi is also creating a document with books. Additional feedback on grammar, speaking and listening would be greatly appreciated.

Here are few resources & issues we shared in ESL 3 & 4:

We held a discussion on how to deal with students who don't want to move but are ready and/or students who want to move but may not be ready. This conversation was a great start to something we could continue in a PD workshop.
Questions for follow up: Can we open additional EIs? Unclear why they close or how maximum number is determined. NH, especially, seems to get additional student interest, and sometimes there is room in classes. Faculty wondering if we can address this. Again, more information to come on this with new dean.

Here are few resources & issues we shared in ESL 5 & 6:

Great workplace site to use for levels 5 & 6: careeronestop.org . This is a site similar to WOIS with videos, personal and professional assessment tests, etc.
This group discussed topics covered in class around job readiness, including interview skills, funding, Work Source and Work force visits, having Teresa Romaneschi visit to discuss transition, and additional skills/resources for these levels.
Another resource shared was the Washington Post which has 3 levels available. Level 6 instructor uses "authentic" level, but there are 2 other levels available. Worth checking out if you teach 4-6!
Discussion on AI answers and using personal prompts to curb AI answers.
Reading ideas included: read & annotate articles, collaboratively create comprehension questions, have students create questions that connect the students' lives with the reading

The Canvas TS Faculty Resource site it up and running. A huge thanks to Akemi and Hannah for their feedback and ideas. Thank you, too, to Akemi for adding content already!

If you would like to participate and add content, please let me know; I can request you be added as an instructor. Per our attempt to build compassionate interaction and community, please review the site agreement which, as with everything, is a work in progress and collaboration and is open to suggestions:

Transitional Studies Teaching Resources is a learning community that will provide supportive and safe environments for faculty to share their expertise, resources and ideas.

You can also connect and collaborate with one another through discussion for further dialogue.

Please be open minded and compassionate. Please remember not to delete other faculty's work! If you see an edit or have a question about a resource, please email that faculty personally not publicly. Let them decide if/how they want to edit.

Any shared links to Google docs should be copied; do not type directly into them as you will be changing the original.

By participating in this Canvas site you agree to this statement of support.

Thanks again everyone for the rich discussions and shares.

I appreciate the sharing.

Kind regards,

Jill McDonough, M.Ed. (she/her)

Instructor & TS Faculty Coordinator