We recently hosted a Zoom discussion to discuss how county ESOL programs are responding to COVID 19. This meeting was coordinated to gather information on how coalition members are pivoting their processes to continue serving learners and to identify how MCAEL can best support programs as instruction goes online.
We had some great suggestions and discussion. Many providers are formulating plans and some have transitioned to online teaching. The tools being used vary, for example, the Literacy Council of Montgomery County and the Ethiopian Community Center are using Google Hangouts while the Chinese Culture and Community Service Center and Montgomery College are using Zoom. Here is some of what our partners shared with us:
Ahu Moser, Director, Academic Programming | Literacy Council of Montgomery County
We currently have all our classes online; between March 16th and March 20th, we did some video recordings. We are using Google Hangouts and we provided both our teachers and students training in how to use Google Hangout. This has been a learning process as our teachers are trying to figure out how to make this online learning more practical, learning new tricks and tips. We are very excited about this and we are all learning as we go through this, but I am happy with our progress.
Roza Beyene, Program Manager | Ethiopian Community Center
We have been having a little bit of tough time since there were no classes and we couldn’t figure out how long these classes would be suspended. But now we have restarted calling our students to see if they would interested in having our classes continued online and most of our students are willing to participate the online class and we choose Google Hangouts for our needs by discussing with the teachers as well as with some of the students who are tech savvy. The challenge that I feel we might face is not every student is tech savvy and not all of them have smart phones so that is going to be our challenge. We have been calling and checking on our students so far and everyone is doing well except for the stress of staying home and not working or going to class so hopeful this will lift their spirit.
Chiao-chiao Liu, Education Director| Chinese Culture and Community Service Center
The last two weeks we have been contacting the students and we found out that the students want to continue learning. I got in touch with my instructors and provided them with some Zoom training to teacher. We are using Zoom for the first time, so this has been a learning experience for me too. We are almost ready and will resume our classes on April 1st. Our classes will be held five days a week; multilevel classes each day. Students who were not able to join us before will be able to join us now since this is online; we are expecting more participants to join then before. We are still learning but everyone is excited.
Emma Wilson, Adult ESOL & Literacy Program Manager | Montgomery College
ESOL program is continuing instruction; we received support from MC to provide an online platform for our teachers, we are using Zoom. We did our training during spring break and classes resumed online. We are seeing good attendance and seeing different needs from students such as the need for healthcare, childcare, employment, mental health, etc. We are trying to tap into our networks to support our students. It has been a bitter learning experience for the teachers; it has been challenging; we are addressing technical challenges and planning for additional training, but I think that we are at least continuing to engage students and the students are responding well.
We are thankful for the resilience of our partners and are ready to help where we can to support their work during this critical time.
