Conference held for Chilean schoolteachers

Have teacher trainer credentials, will travel. That could well be the motto for ELI instructor Susan Coakley. Coakley flew to Santiago, Chile, for a week in July to meet with Chilean schoolteachers who had previously received EFL training at ELI in 2004, a program which she coordinated.

Susan Coakley (standing, fifth from left) met with 2004 participants in the Chilean Teacher Training Program at a conference in Santiago in July.

The trip––unlike Coakley’s first follow-up visit in 2003 in which she toured schools––consisted of a conference for all the Chilean English teachers who trained abroad in 2004. This included sites in California, Canada and Australia, as well as the University of Delaware. Of the 23 teachers who visited Delaware in November 2004, 18 attended the conference. They all gave presentations demonstrating what they had learned in Delaware and how they were applying their newly acquired knowledge in their classrooms and sharing it with their colleagues.

Coakley was very favorably impressed with the progress made by these teachers.

“They spent a very intensive four weeks in Delaware last fall. Now I see that they have been working just as hard since they returned,” said Coakley.

“Each teacher has a project that he or she is implementing, based on their needs and on the methodologies and technologies learned during the 2004 program. Some teachers have worked at improving mostly their own teaching, while sharing with their colleagues. Others have focused on involving other teachers and classes throughout their schools. Still others planned activities that required collaboration throughout the town or district. All of the presentations showed a great deal of what the teachers had learned in Delaware and how well they have worked since their return to their schools.”

The Chilean Teacher Training Program has been held at the English Language Institute for five out of the past seven years since the program was established by the Chilean Ministry of Education as part of its Education Reform movement. The Ministry is stressing education in technology and in English in order to maintain and improve Chile’s position in the globalized economy.

Beginning in 1999, more than 125 English teachers from Chile have spent time in Newark, studying technology and pedagogy, improving their English proficiency and their teaching.

“The most amazing part of it all,” said Coakley, “is the realization that the work we do at ELI is being spread throughout Chile.