2006 Wellman Award Winner
Delivered at WAESOL 2006, October 21, 2006
Acceptance Speech
Dr. Paul Schneider , President of Washington Academy of Languages
Sally Wellman was an inspirational and thoughtful teacher so I am honored and humbled by this award.
My first WAESOL conference was 29 years ago, before some of you were born. Both WAESOL and language instruction have changed a great deal in the intervening years. In some ways, our profession has grown in status in the eyes of the community. In other ways, a good part of the population believes that anyone who speaks English can teach it to another. Many countries hire EFL instructors rather more cavalierly than they would public school teachers.
29 years ago, WAESOL’s membership consisted largely of teachers of adults, primarily those on F-1 student visas who were college-bound. Academically, we had one foot in formalistic ways of teaching such as the Audio-Lingual Method and another in what came to be known as the Communicative Approach. This method was in its infancy. In the 1977 WAESOL Conference, a number of presenters talked about the benefits of not teaching grammar. Remember, the Natural Approach wasn’t published until 1983. One big issue was that if we didn’t teach grammar, how would we test students to find out what they had learned? As I said, we only had one foot in each of two broadly different modes of teaching. We had not yet asked how we could teach for both accuracy and fluency, but we were coming to that question.
These days many of our members are K-12 teachers. In the state of Washington, almost 200 different languages are spoken in our public schools. The pressures on schools and teachers today compared with the halcyon days of the 70s have been exponentially multiplied.
First, there are legal issues. Take one example: Can we pull ELL students out of a mainstream classroom for the purpose of teaching a sheltered content variation of the mainstream curriculum? Some people think that doing so is a violation of the 1954 Brown decision about separate but equal classrooms being inherently unequal. On the other hand, keeping these students in class is apparently contrary to the 1974 Lau decision in which it is a violation of a child’s civil rights if they don’t understand the language of instruction. Here is a "catch 22" if ever there was one which leads to the conclusion that teaching an ELL child is legally impossible. That can be a little frustrating!
Second, there is this country's test-orientation. If, as we now believe, teaching language is best done at the discourse level, then testing—and I mean WASL and No Child Left Behind—is often done at the sentence level where word meaning cancels use for a second language learner and puts them at a severe disadvantage. Until recently, students had to take English exams fairly soon after they arrived; the latest changes have not improved the situation much.
Third, teachers face practical pressures. There are often too many students at too many levels learning English in one classroom, with some students not literate in their first language. Given that ELL teachers generally have a much heavier preparation and teaching load than mainstream teachers, they deserve our most heartfelt kudos.
None of these issues are insurmountable of course. I am certain that many of you here have the ideas and the energy to find solutions. Change and the incorporation of new ideas into our field are vital. After many years of thought and active teaching, I still find the field fascinating and hope to be here a while longer.
Thank you very much for this award.
Dr. Paul Schneider
2005 Wellman Award Winner
Delivered at WAESOL 2005, October 22, 2005
Acceptance Speech
Dr. Nancy Butler Tulare, Director Emeritus of the School of Teaching ESL
I am honored to receive the Sally Wellman Memorial Teaching Award. I hope that Sally Wellman would approve of the choice.
I was originally trained as a historian. Now, I’m a history. I’m a history of language teaching in the second half of the 20th century.
- My career has been affected by new ideas, new theories, new methods, world events that caused waves of immigrants, currency fluctuations that caused students to stay home with a greater need for English teachers to come to their home countries to teach, a series of reforms, and increasing state mandates.
- I have supervised teachers going for ESL Endorsement under four different sets of state requirements and have personally met the requirements for three of them.
- I studied Spanish in High School using the grammar-translation method, Russian at the University of Washington via the Direct Method, learned to teach Russian in 1963 using the new and very exciting Audio Lingual Method, and after teaching in a middle school and finishing my graduate programs I taught and administrated in a grammar-based ESL program that evolved to a notional-functional curriculum and then to a communicative approach.
- I learned about teaching machines in the early 60’s, developed my junior-high students’ expertise in threading the movie projectors, listened to students repeating over and over in the language lab, used computers in classrooms before Windows, email, or the Internet, and I now teach online classes, including a class on how to use computers to enhance classroom teaching.
- I developed an intensive post-baccalaureate certificate program in TESOL for Seattle University when there was only one similar program in the US – now there are hundreds.
- I have suffered through the anguish of what to call our students – ESL, EFL, ESL/EFL, ESOL, EAL (English as an Alternative Language), God forbid LEP (Limited English Proficient), and now, I’m sure finally and forever, ELL, English Language Learners.
I accept this award not for myself, but for myself in collaboration with my students, from whom I learned so much, my colleagues, with whom I had so much fun, with world events, that keep every program guessing, with the State of Washington, that keeps forcing us to look at ourselves and our classrooms in different ways, and with the profession of TESOL, that has always tried to help us interpret trends and respond to the changing language-teaching scene.
My advice to teachers who will become histories of the first half of the 21st century in language teaching is to pay attention to and think about it all, do what is required of you by your administration, but at the end of the day continue to do what you know is best for your students. It is your passion for teaching and your concern for your students that will keep everything in perspective and help you survive it all.
Thank you.
Nan Tulare
