Chihuahua English Teachers Get Motivated With New Techniques

Twenty-six Mexican high school English teachers from all over Chihuahua participated in a week-long training session entitled,"All for One and One for All: Student-Centered Teaching Methodologies to Develop Students' Fluency, Skills and Motivation" presented by the Senior English Language Fellow for the Secretariat of Education and Culture of the state of Chihuahua.
The lively teachers spent six hours each day from December 11th-15th, 2006 collaborating in groups, inventing chants, performing role plays, analyzing tasks, developing listening lessons, discovering their learning styles and strategies, and setting professionals goals. Particularly memorable were the very creative "Multiple Intelligence" chants that each group came up with.
The training ended with a posada that included tamales,coke, gifts and certificates of participation to recognize all the hard work of the teachers.

Teacher Trainers Learn "How to Successfully Advise Trainee Research Papers” in Atlacomulco

On November 29th and 30th, 2006, the Senior English Language Fellow presented a workshop in Atlacomulco in the State of Mexico to 17 teacher trainers from 5 different "Escuelas Normales" (Atlacomulco, Tenancingo, Neza, Atizapan and Amecameca). The workshop, developed to improve skills in advising teacher trainee research papers, included the following topics: pre-writing techniques for developing their students’ writing fluency, using rubrics for formative writing assessment, how to effectively cite sources and establish a plagiarism policy and finally, strategies for advising research papers.
The English Fellow was very hospitably received by the Escuela Normal de Atlacomulco and the participants. The workshop participants actively demonstrated a willingness to apply new techniques and asked many questions. According to their workshop evaluations, their favorite topics were: "pre-writing techniques" and "rubrics". Each of them received a certificate of attendance in recognition of their hard work.