TIEC’s Effective School Leadership Institute (ESLI), built capacity for English-language teaching and program oversight in Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia.
The program was designed for administrators and supervisors of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instruction was in collaboration with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia.
- The participants attended a six-week virtual Flexible Learning Foundations professional development course prior to their in-person exchange in Fall 2021. This course was timely as it addressed the focus areas for virtual instruction, which include humanizing online instruction, student engagement, online assessment, and academic integrity.
- Then the in-person exchange included attending the three day TESOL conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a one week school site residency at Corsicana Independent School District, where they observed classrooms from three different school campuses. in Austin, Texas, participants attended a variety of professional activities surrounding English-language learning and administration, including an administrators panel, a governance and policy workshop, a student-centered workshop, and a literacy and leadership object-based workshop.
- Upon their completion of the in-person exchange and participants returning to their home countries, they began TIEC’s Professional Learning Communities virtual course, a six week synchronous virtual course.
- The final phase of the program included monthly action plans and a closing ceremony on their action plans in December 2022. TIEC staff led the attendees in the discussion of SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timebound) goals, including opportunities for them to share and refine their own goals for implementing sustainable change at the institutions within their remit. Participants implemented individual action plans, sharing what they learned in the program to influence instructional leadership, and coaching methods in their home school communities.
The administrators gained an understanding of U.S. pedagogical theory, instructional practices and knowledge on American English topics. They planned to draw upon the theory to develop their own instructional materials, standards development, TESOL methods, and coaching/mentoring.