On 22 October the school hosted its second annual event to link students and alumni from the MA Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), MA Teaching English for Academic Purposes (TEAP) and MA Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages (TCSOL) programmes. The main purpose was for our alumni to share their stories with our current cohorts of students about their experiences of studying on their masters programmes. 43 people attended including course and alumni relations staff.
Stephanie Hambling, Alumni Relations Officer talked about exciting volunteering opportunities for alumni and about national and international events.
Course alumni, Jo Leech (TESOL), Sally Waddingham (TEAP), Rachel Robinson (TEAP) and Leying (Amy) Li (TCSOL) spoke very warmly about their experiences whilst at University and what they have gone on to achieve after graduation.
Dr Martha Jones, course leader for MA TEAP demonstrated the International Language Teaching Alumni Resource, an open educational resource, which was created last year with support and funding from the School of Education. Alumni from the three programmes were invited to send their stories as written text, video clips or audio files about their teaching context, career path, critical incidents/classroom episodes and continuing professional development. The resource includes interesting and engaging accounts of the alumni’s rich experiences as teachers in different contexts round the world. This resource will continue growing as more students graduate from our language education programmes.
Dr Xin Gao, MA TCSOL course leader ended the event with an engaging story about the learning journeys of some of her TCSOL alumni and how they developed professionally over a period of time. She also gave an account of the method used to compile stories from her alumni.
This was an enriching event for everybody involved and we look forward to the next event.
Posted on Friday 9th November 2018