Academic Professional Development

My academic professional development at Portland State University was expanded as the result of several hours of classes and workshops. Among them was the Practicum course that all GTAs in the World Languages Department were required to take, one hour a week for the course of the two years (three, 10 week trimesters per year) within the Master’s program. The Practicum course involved much more than just attending the class. We were required to read, watch videos, and listen to podcasts about teaching methods and best practices, innovations in teaching a foreign language, and various techniques that were new to us. We were required to demonstrate activities and share concerns and successes in the classroom. Our language classes were observed at least once during each trimester by our Practicum coordinator, Jenny Ceciliano, and we were required to observe other teachers during their class times.

Besides those hours of Practicum, at the beginning of the 2018 and 2019 school years I participated in not only the 8 hours of required orientation for all WLL instructors, but also the more than 20 hours each year in training and development workshops.

Another source of academic professional development for me during the course of my Master’s program included the Methods of Teaching a Foreign Language class that we were required to take the second trimester of our first year, which took place twice a week for two hours each over the course of ten weeks. The Methods of Teaching a Foreign Language course with Dr. Kathie Godfrey also involved learning new methods and techniques specific to the benefit of foreign language learners, becoming knowledgeable about ACTFL standards and proficiency levels, and developing our own teaching philosophies. In this class we were also called upon to teach the methods we use in the classroom to our fellow students and develop new ways to teach effectively based on what we learned from them and the instructor.

I was already an experienced ESL teacher by the time I started my Master’s program at PSU, with fourteen years of teaching and development under my belt. But what I learned in Practicum, the development workshops and the Methods of Teaching a Foreign Language course about teaching Spanish to beginning learners took me to the next level of proficiency as a foreign language teacher.

Finally, I’ve thus far attended and presented at two professional academic conferences – one during my Master’s program, and one just after I graduated. The first was the CineLit conference in March of 2019, where I attended approximately 6 hours of presentations, and also presented my own research as part of the “Psychocinematics: PSU Student Research Showcase/Roundtable.” In June of 2020 I presented at the XXVI CILH conference on the topic of Mexican feminist literature. Both were opportunities for me to further my professional development in the area of Spanish film and literature research.

Artifacts:

Member of professional organization: https://www.actfl.org

Info about 2019 Cinelit

Practicum Syllabus, Winter 2019

2019 GTA Orientation Agenda