More than an exercise

Making friends and influencing learners

“Partnerships” is a new feature highlighting how members of the college community are working to connect with the broader Minnesota community.

All teacher licensure students in the college are required to spend extensive time in classrooms before being licensed to teach. But what if they were given the opportunity to spend even more time working with K–12 students as a service—no credits, no benefits toward achieving licensure?

As it turns out, most of them will leap at the chance. Susan Ranney, lecturer in the second languages and cultures program in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, discovered this when she gave the students in her class for teaching English as a second language (ESL) an opportunity to help students in a local school.

She asked two teachers in the Robbinsdale school district, Karla Stone at Plymouth Middle School and Jennifer Leazer at Armstrong High School, if they would like to have some help from Ranney’s students. Absolutely, came the response, so the Robbinsdale students wrote letters of introduction, and the college’s students wrote personal letters in return. Relationships have blossomed, creating stronger motivation for the secondary school students to work on their writing because they are writing for new friends in the college.

“The students at the school were so excited,” Ranney says. “It makes the learning authentic when you are writing for a real person and you know something about that person. Our licensure students really went all out, drawing pictures for the kids, and really connecting. It made their own learning about how to teach these kids a more authentic experience as well.”

Ranney came up with the idea last year. “I was preparing for my class on how to teach writing. In the past I would have sample ESL student essays for them to work with. It occurred to me that it would be so much more engaging for my students to write feedback to real students who could actually use it. Then it isn’t just an exercise.”

Learning to write is complicated even in your first language, Ranney points out. She wanted to help ESL students in the schools develop as writers while also helping her own students learn how to better teach ESL writing.

“I went to the schools and picked up the students’ draft essays. I conferred with the teachers as to what they were looking for their students to accomplish in that particular assignment,” Ranney explains. “My students then had the opportunity to evaluate the essays of their pen-pals based on the teacher’s guidelines and goals. It helped them learn how to structure assignments and how to judge them appropriately.”

Ranney then brought the corrected essays back to the classroom for the ESL students. She spoke to the class and told them about her own students and how they were learning to teach young people such as them to succeed in school. Now Ranney and the teachers exchange the letters and drafts regularly to keep the writing exchange going.

“It’s important for our students to have as many connections as possible to real classrooms,” Ranney says. “They have so many placements during their training, but every opportunity adds something to their preparation. And it allows them to have an impact beyond their own college classroom. One teacher we are working with is trying to get funding to bring her students here to the campus in the spring. These kids now have a connection to the U and I hope many of them will come here when they graduate to become teachers themselves.”

 —Peggy Rader