ACT FULL

This week I have been attending ACTFL (american council for the teaching of foreign languages) training to become certified to conduct OPIs (oral proficiency interviews). The week-long training is only the start of the process; certification takes nearly a year after the week of training finishes.

It's been an valuable experience for many reasons:

• I've connected with a few friends from the Arabic department that are doing certification for their department
• I've met with language teachers from across the United States including New England, the Midwest, Great Lakes, and those who are internationals
• I've made connections between this training and my courses this semester such as evaluation and qualitative research
• I'm getting to know four of my coworkers better as we participate in training together

It's been a tight fit to participate in this training and keep up with my classes; thankfully, I have been working ahead on my assignments and I should be able to keep up.

A day's grace

The term is winding up - next week is the end, and being in grad school, I don't really have to worry about finals since professors dislike administering them as much as we dislike taking them.

Yet, there are still some assignments let to complete - wait, let me rephrase that: There are a LOT of assignments let to complete. I haven't been falling behind, so at least I am saved by that, but given that this week I am participating in some language testing training, my homework time will be severely reduced. Thankfully, I screwed up.

See, I thought that my training started today and ran all week, but as it turns out, we start tomorrow, thereby giving me one extra day of full homework to get a headstart on the end of the term. And as much as there are a lot of things to do, it's been a useful semester:

• I researched and developed a revised teacher observation program for my job
• I prepared an evaluation plan for our rater training program
• I jumped back into my proposed dissertation researched and learned better ways to collect and analyze qualitative data
• I started writing a condensed version of my thesis for submission to an academic journal
• I submitted two chapter proposals to teacher-in-action book
• I have completed all of the course work for my doctoral program aside from one course that I hope to take in the summer

So although it's been a hectic spring, it's been good. Kimberly has been supportive and busy with her own projects and job. I think we are both looking forward to taking a break at the end of the summer. Until then, we've got a lot to keep us busy.