Faculty Meeting and Workshop Minutes

Meeting Date and Time:  March 19, 2016, 10 am to 1:00 pm

Present:   Faculty and Staff

Last	First	Last	First
Andryushchenko	Galyna	Mere-Mere	Semen
Arbai	Jenny	Sanchez	Veronica
Armyakov	Andrey	Schwenke	Tom
Azoidou	Evdokia	Ulmasov	Sukhrob
Brazhnikova	Olesya	Zatulovski	Irina
Bush	F. Ann
Davis	Caryn
Diaz	Anna
Diaz	Gladys
Dimitrova	Iliyana
German	Oana
Gomez	Angie
Gomez	Francina
Kyrychuk	Diana
Lopez	Ildelisa
Machado	Maria A.

Minutes – Topics Discussed

General Housekeeping: Reviewed the following items –

• Spanish American Institute has been housed on West 43^rd Street since 1968 and will be moving to 35^th near 8^th Avenue Spring 2016 once the CO is finalized.
• The new location of the Spanish American Institute features an English Through the Arts Center and the grand piano, which was moved to the new school last month, awaits us.
• Interested faculty and staff have been moving furniture to the new school over the last few Saturdays and everyone’s help is appreciated.
• New York City Transit Vouchers will be available and Mr. Ferraro is working on streamlining the process to make it available to all interested faculty and staff.

On-going Student Orientation: Saturday or Sunday bike trips are an excellent way to assist students to learn about a variety of neighborhoods and boroughs. Faculty and staff are encouraged to lead trips together during the spring and summer.

Facilities and Equipment: Notify the administration if a tape recorder, computer or other equipment malfunctions so that repairs can occur in a timely fashion.

Student Placement: Faculty and staff were notified that a link to placement tests can be emailed to prospective students to take the test in the comfort of their own home. Feedback to this new procedure was encouraged.

Professional Development: Teaching faculty were encouraged to check the expiration date of their teaching licenses so they enroll in required Methods courses.

Communicative Language Teaching workshop facilitated by Dean Davis provided a history of English language teaching approaches over the years and discussion about the role of the teacher in order to realize a student-centered classroom. The Dean also modeled  these eight essential ways to create and maintain a successful communicative language approach which included the following, as she led a writing activity connected to a NorthStar Level 3 unit.

• State the purpose of the day’s lesson, which connects to North Star student learning outcomes
• Organize partners so students  review previous day’s topic and to eliminate “teacher to one student” back and forth
• Provide clear instructions for tasks
• Assess student’s comprehension of instructions before tasks begin
• Eliminate “echoing” student responses
• Ensure students work in partners or small groups to work through tasks for the majority of the 50 minute period
• Monitor tasks
• Assess tasks after completion

American Language Program’s (ALP) Winter Conference at Columbia University on February 27, 2016: Eight teaching faculty attended the ALP conference. Four teaching faculty, Jenny Arbai, Andrey Amryakov, Olesya Brazhnikova and Oana Gherman, provided information about their favorite workshops and how they applied the information in their classrooms at the Spanish American Institute.

At 1:00 pm the meeting was adjourned to a luncheon gathering at ------------------ where informal discussions of the day’s topics continued until dusk.