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Statement of the problem:
Today in Israel, too many learners complete their public school education without having achieved a working knowledge of spoken and written English that could open life opportunities in careers, study, travel, and social connections. We believe that even students who begin as English learners experiencing difficulty, with appropriate teaching and early intervention, can become proficient English students and achieve this working knowledge of English – but attention and resources must be devoted to achieve this.
Goals we want to lobby for:
Funding for schools to have a remedial teacher (מורה שילוב) for early-intervention tutoring in English for learners identified as being at risk (and until we've closed the gap, for all struggling English learners)
Teacher-training colleges to have a track for מורות שילוב teaching English skills
Textbooks: to influence MoE and publishers to teach reading more effectively; to require beginning English textbooks to work more effectively, including research based literacy instruction
Possibly another: to convince all the colleges that train English teachers that teachers-in-training should be required to take a course in how to teach reading and writing by linguistically-informed, MSL methods (those proven by research to support learning by weaker language learners)
Statement of purpose:
EFL Literacy for All is a professional community of English teachers and teacher educators who strive to ensure that every learner receives English language instruction appropriate to their language learning needs.
Unlocking the door to both literacy and language use requires, for many learners, more explicit instruction in learning to associate heard/spoken language (phonemes) with written language (graphemes) and explicit instruction in English orthographic patterns.
We as EFL teacher educators are deeply committed to closing the gap between the teaching agents (teachers, teacher educators, and curriculum) and the reality in the English classroom.To this end, we want to ensure that all teachers have access to appropriate and reliable, research-based literacy instruction materials and approaches.
More effective English instruction should start in elementary school in order to avoid creating the common situation of learned helplessness (and hopelessness) after students experience early failure in English learning. Our goal is to close the gap before it develops by immediate intervention to ensure that all English learners learn to read, write, and use basic English.
Teachers, teacher educators, policy-makers, textbook writers and academics are all invited to join this long-term initiative to lobby for a fundamental shift in efforts to better support EFL language and literacy acquisition.
We hope to raise awareness, starting in education circles and spreading to schools, families, and communities, to understand how effective English instruction can be provided.
Some ideas for action:
Sources of tutors and volunteers we could train: שיעור אחר, מטף שירה (?),PUSH, in teacher training programs and hachshara of volunteers
Researchgate – forum for researchers - perform research in Israel on literacy, read research and publish here
Start a SIG (special Interest Group) at Mofet; have a yom iyun (or professional meeting) of like-minded educators, with a "רב שיח" panel, presenting what each of us work in, problems in the field, with researchers reporting back on what they have found.
Professional standards are not sufficiently connected to the English curriculum. They need to be adapted as they have been for other fields.
Work on projects based around
ABLE kit RAMA (רשות מדידה והערכה ארצית) - for teacher evaluation
"Spreading the word" action items: To get started, we need a logo, Facebook page, even website where some of the above, and resources, can be posted and shared. (This website is a first attempt at that.)
First meeting attended by: Stephanie Fuchs, Jackie Teplitz, Janina Kahn-Horwitz, Fern Levitt