Program Background

The U.S. Department of State, through the Fulbright Teacher Exchange Branch of its Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, has selected the University of Delaware to implement an English teacher training program designed to support Jordan’s Ministry of Education in its initiative to enhance the teaching of English at the junior high school level.

Program Goals

• support the Ministry of Education in its ongoing effort to prepare English teachers at the highest level of competency in language instruction;
• increase the capacity of teachers to conduct training for other EFL classroom teachers in the use of proven communicative methods of teaching, in meeting curricular goals, and in integrating supplementary activities and materials;
• provide several hundred teachers with a plethora of instructional aids, texts, cds, and other materials (known as “books-in-a-box”) designed to augment and complement their course textbook;
• forge long-term professional relationships among those Jordanian professionals selected for training and their US colleagues; and
• reach a highly successful conclusion to this pilot project, as measured by the number of teachers trained in the use of the provided materials and activities, thereby ensuring a continuation and expansion of the training for the future

Project Components

• interactive workshops providing intensive training on current EFL instruction and teaching methodologies;
• an ongoing interactive seminar series on innovative and effective ways for classroom teachers to use the textbooks their academies have adopted for the ninth (or eighth grade) classes;
• introduction to the “books-in-a-box” materials and training in practical ways teachers might supplement their textbook with the charts, games, posters, maps, cds, picture dictionaries, and other materials the boxes contain;
• observations of and exchanging ideas with English as a Second Language teachers at the public school and university level;
• teaching with technology seminars
• experiential professional development in conducting effective teacher training. Jordanian participants will design and deliver a one to two day conference showcasing what they have learned while at the University of Delaware; and
• a one-week escorted trip to Washington, DC to meet representatives from the Department of State and other government and private sector agencies, visit historic and cultural sites, and tour model schools for teaching English as a Second language and foreign languages.