Successful Endeavor That Afforded Me

¶ … successful endeavor that afforded me quite as few learning experiences in the process and certainly bolstered my esteem.

ESL Debates was a project that was managed by myself and something that I introduced to my fellow colleagues (5 other teachers) when working in a foreign country as ESL teacher. There was no cost involved, since the classroom library was already well stocked. We did, however, ask students and parents to solicit more books from outside sources and we ourselves approached libraries, stores, and others for donations.

It was initially planned that the students would select their different books from a huge variety of books that would be in the classroom, put together a speech based on the book and discuss the book in front of the class each student given a different day to do so. It was further envisioned that this would be followed by an impromptu class debate with interested staff and students from other classes joining. The intention of the project had several purposes: a. To involve the class in the student's interest; b, to enable him or her to particular his interest in English thereby extending his knowledge of the language associated in the subject as the same time, and; c. To develop his critical thinking, debating skills and self-image whilst doing so. It was also hoped that this would facilitate links between the various classroom levels so that students on the lower level could be encouraged to improve this skills (via competition and the compulsion of having to present) by students on a higher level.

As the project evolved, it changed somewhat in that staff and students found the perspectives and debates so interesting that a school magazine developed as a result, as well as review leaflets, taped reviews, and a website. Parents also attended the debate and we had to monitor control to ensure that the meetings did not become too chaotic.

Complications arose into scheduling the debates since we found that once a week gave too little time for the student to prepare and particularly once the project evolved into website design and leaflet production -- all of which necessarily took up classroom time -- we decided to schedule it once a month. Organizing the event so that it coalesced with parent's and other staff member's schedule too was time-consuming and gave us initial problems. In the end, we simply implemented conditions on who was, and was not, to attend (since it seemed at oen point as though entire families were starting to turn up and that this would turn into a fiesta). We also involved other teachers into the control and organization of the event, and we imposed a consistent date for the event to occur. In this way, we discovered, we did not have to plan, and alter, the date in advance, nether did we have to constantly concerns ourselves about advertising the event. There was simply a short monthly notice on the website with the name of the presenter and a brief description of the topic. The presenter's address was followed by another short description of her topic followed by synopsis of the debate and comments, all again on the website. In this way, our attention could be focused on helping the ESL student script and prepare her presentation as well as helping her review it following the event,