Welcome Back
Class of 2011.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Can you believe you are in the last semester of your MAT program? In just a short time, you will be accepting your diplomas as graduates and preparing for another goal, AND it will be warmer.

For now, we must focus on the task at hand, the spring semester. Our primary focus is the Teacher Candidate Work Sample (TCWS). This is your magnum opus. The TCWS provides evidence of your ability to design instruction and assessment for diverse learners while meeting national standards and state frameworks. The last three chapters of our main text, Teacher’s Handbook, support this project as we read about differentiated instruction, assessment, and technology for the language classroom.

Your secondary focus revolves around becoming a professional, which requires you to make instructional decisions, collaborate with peers, maintain professional responsibilities, and present yourself professionally in employment opportunities.

To provide evidence of your professionalism, you will evaluate three textbooks, attend another professional event, and observe two or three classrooms.

We will also set aside class time to review your research, polish your resumes, and discuss job interviews.

Another intense semester awaits us. It will be exciting, demanding, and rewarding.

N O T E :
You'll find links to your syllabus and calendar on the left sidebar.

 
Dr. Bowles

Freddie A. Bowles
Assistant Professor of Foreign Language Education
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
College of Education and Health Professions
Stone House South F09
University of Arkansas
Fayetteville, AR 72701
Office: 479-575-3035
fbowles@uark.edu

Different languages — I mean the actual vocabularies, the idioms — have worked out certain mechanisms of communication and registration. No one language is complete. A master may be continually expanding his own tongue, rendering it fit to bear some charge hitherto borne only by some other alien tongue, but the process does not stop with any one man. While Proust is learning Henry James, preparatory to breaking through certain French paste-board partitions, the whole American speech is churning and chugging, and every other tongue doing likewise.
     — Ezra Pound, "How to Read," 1929