[Weston Cooper] I was actually born and raised in Taiwan and my mom's Taiwanese and my dad'sAmerican and I lived there until I was 18. In first grade I got up and taught the wholeclass English. Teaching has always been something that's been on my mind. [Sara Gottleib] I'm actually moving to China in less than a month to go teach. The jobthat I'm going to be working, I get to develop my own curriculum. It's an insane amount offreedom that you wouldn't get in the US and you wouldn't get without the certificate. [Fatemeh Zeytoon] I think this is the right course for the teachers who seek for waysto improve in their profession and to get some ideas from the culture as well becausewhen we teach a language we should know the culture and we should experience it. So Ithink this is the right place and this is the right program to experience that. [Patricia Brenner] My favorite part of teaching this program is the students and the internationalityof it and watching them become friendly with each other. We have 13 students in the classthis time, and about half of them are non-native speakers of English and the other half arenative speakers so it's a really, really nice mix. [Fatemeh Zeytoon] I'm from Iran. It was a really interesting experience for me becausea lot of people from different cultures, people from Korea, from Taiwan, and also from Britain. We support each other in each aspect and we can get some ideas from each other and alsowe can get familiar with the culture. [Weston Cooper] I think people don't give enough credit to nonnative speakers. TheirEnglish is actually at a very good level and they know more grammar than we do—than thenative speakers do. Teaching someone to speak English is completely different than speakingEnglish. And that's one of the things that I've learned in class is how difficult somethings we take for very simple can be. [Sara Gottleib] We didn't learn how to speak English here, you know, not in the same waythat we're going to be teaching it. We learned it as a first language, we were kids, andyou just kind of pick it up. These people who are in the class with me, they've learnedit. They've actually gone through the process of doing exactly what we're learning to teach. You know things like idioms and slang that I don't realize I use, I say um and like alot. And they point out those things, it's nice to get an idea of basic things that Inever would've assumed were a problem that they struggle with. [Patricia Brenner] The main focus of it is to have them design lesson plans and thenthrough the course of the week we work on preparing for that. [Sara Gottleib] So tomorrow, we have to come in and we have to teach a ten minute lessonon grammar. I've never taught grammar before so I have no idea what I'm doing. But Patriciathroughout the past week will do little demonstrations. Seeing somebody demonstrate it and gettinga feel for what it feels like as a student is the most helpful thing of all time. [Patricia Brenner] And then on Friday they give their demo lessons. And they're givenfeedback from other classmates and they're given feedback from me as well. [Sara Gottleib] The international students who have seen teachers and they can say, youknow I had a teacher who did that and it actually kind of messed me up. Or they can say, whatyou did, I had a teacher do that and it really helped me out. So you get interactive feedbackand are able to really see what exactly it is that happens in between writing the lessonplan and the students learning it. [Patricia Brenner] They observe two classes in the course of this quarter and they alsofacilitate in classes which means that they go into advanced levels speaking classes andactually engage with the students in a conversation in a small group. [Weston Cooper] In Seattle right off campus I can find 6-7 places that sell bubble tea,I can find places that have all kinds of food from all over the world. It definitely helpsme and I know a lot of other international students, it helps us not miss home as much. [Sara Gottleib] You step on to that campus and it's so beautiful. It's a really welcomingcommunity, especially UW. [Fatemeh Zeytoon] There's a lot facilities in this university that gives a lot of opportunitiesto students to be relaxed and at the same time to study. [Patricia Brenner] I think at the end of the program they're going to be pretty amazedat the extraordinary amount of information that they've taken in and the practice thatthey've been able to have. And also some of what they need to do to prepare themselvesif they're going off somewhere. [Weston Cooper] Anything that we've encountered in the class, samples of other people's teaching,other people's teaching demonstrations or examples in the books—they prepare us tobe an effective teacher. [Sara Gottleib] I've just been keeping a notebook filled with little tips. Stuff like stop anactivity when the energy is high rather than waiting for it to fall, stuff like that. Littlepractical things that you could pick up while you're doing it but it would take a while. They're almost like cheat sheets for teaching. [Patricia Brenner] I think that one great reason for taking a class like this is justto get a taste of what the field is like and so that by the time you leave it, you're probablygoing to have a pretty good idea of whether it's for you or not. And that you'll feelarmed when you go off to this teaching job with some self-confidence and some sense thatwhen you step into the classroom you have an idea about where you want to go.
