Teacher Training for International Students Culture Immersion Program (ISCIP)

Jingjin Lyu & Sara Luo

GSEP - Pepperdine University

EDTE 604: Program Design and Evaluation

Professor Weina Li Chen

April. 12. 2021

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Program description

This teacher training program will begin in June; it is a five day online training program.

This program includes five modules that are designed to help teachers understand the importance

and challenges of collaborative learning and develop skills on creating a low affective filter study

space. After teachers finish this training program, they will be teaching in the International

Student Culture Immersion program in August. There will be 15 American teachers to participate

in the training. Based on geographic location and to ease the burden of time differences, all the

classes will be held online. All the teachers will be required to attend the live session. The class

schedule is listed on page 13.

Introduction

This teachers training program will happen in the end of June and will be one week long,

each course lasting approximately three to five hours. Teachers will develop their lesson plan in

July, so they will be ready to teach this program in the beginning of August. This five-day

teaching training program aims to help American teachers develop skills in creating a low

affective filter study space in the International Student Culture Immersion program (ISCIP).

There will be courses to help the teachers better understand how to help international students.

The instructor will also teach teachers how to use strategic lesson planning skills to plan a low

affective filter classroom and help international students understand the importance of

collaborative learning. It will be beneficial for both teachers and students to have a tremendous

two-way culture exchange and understanding. During the session, instructors will mainly focus

on class environment and culture perspectives to help teachers better understand this training

session’s purpose. Teachers will develop a suitable lesson plan to assist Chinese international
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students’ high school learning journey. This program is specifically targeted to teachers who will

teach English in STS ISCIP.

Needs Analysis

In an increasingly diverse and inclusive society, many people leave their home countries

to study in other countries as exchange students. Some students have even started to study

abroad from middle school or high school. According to Bustamante (2020), as shown on figure

one, the number of international students from China in the United States was highest in

2018-2019 with 369,648 students. The market for studying abroad is continually expanding.

Therefore this training session is designed to help prepare a group of American teachers to teach

Chinese international students in a culture immersion program. More specifically, it is designed

to help younger international students gain knowledge about American culture and speech skills.

All of the students will be studying in American high schools.

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[Figure 1]

As the image (Bustamante, 2020) shows , there is a large number of Chinese students

studying in the United States. There are many institutions or programs in China that help

students go abroad academically, but most of them aim to help students succeed in standardized

tests such as TOEFL and IELTS. There are many students who do not get help with life

adjustment, culture shock, and learning in an American classroom. Young middle school or high

school students who come to a new country unprepared, even if they have good test scores, may

experience maladjustment to life and study, which may affect their overall performance (Zheng

& West-Olatunji, 2016). For this phenomenon, researchers point to three aspects: intercultural

adaptation, attachment and relationship problems, and the preference for coping and seeking help

(Zheng & West-Olatunji, 2016). Since this phenomenon shows the needs of students, and there is
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a lack of organization in the market for students to seek help, we decided to design this program

to train American teachers who can help students adapt to a cross-cultural environment.

This program will cooperate with a Chinese company called STS Students Travel

Schools foundation (STS). The company was established in 1985. The company has been

working with younger international students for over 20 years. STS hosts many summer camps

in America that teach Chinese students American cultures and travel around the USA. However,

according to the research (STS official website), there is no specific culture immersion program

for international students/exchange students to experience American culture or education before

studying abroad. To fill this blank, STS decided to develop an International Students Culture

Immersion Program (ISCIP) to help Chinese students quickly adapt to the study and living

environment in the United States before starting their high school journey.

The teachers will be Chinese agency teachers and local American English teachers

teaching in middle school or high school. Chinese agency teachers were trained by STS agency,

and they have an English learning background. They will help students with settling in their new

environment and they will be teacher assistants during the ISCIP. There will be another training

program specifically designed for Chinese teachers, which will further explain how Chinese

teachers will assist American teachers during the ISCIP. This program will mainly focus on

American teachers’ training. The STS agency will hire fifteen American English teachers to

teach this ISCIP. Since American teachers are local residents, they have a better understanding of

American culture and education system, which will help students have a chance to experience

the American culture/education before school starts. The teachers will be teaching primary to

intermediate to advanced proficiency level students

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Demographic

This program will have fifteen spots open for teachers who want to participate in this

training session. STS agency will hold an application process. Here is the requirement to apply

for this job: all teachers should have over two years of American high school English teaching

experience. If applicants have taken some ESL training courses or classes, they will be admitted

with priority. People who speak English with a bachelor's degree and two years of

education-related experience (i.e., middle school teaching or shadowing of ESL classroom

conduct) are also qualified to participate in this program and teach in the ISCIP.

This training session will take place online for several reasons. First of all, online courses

are convenient, and teachers can attend the training at their own homes. Since all the teachers

may be from different states or cities, online classes will be a more convenient way to deliver

this project because of location and time zone differences. The second reason is that if courses

are held online, the instructor can record whole lessons and share them with participants, which

means all the course materials are always available online. Teachers can also watch recordings

and work at their own pace, as well as do more reviews. Finally, online courses are usually

cheaper than traditional in-person courses. Thus, STS can save a lot of space and other costs.

Besides, participants can save on costs, such as the cost of renting a house if they are from other

areas, the purchase of textbooks, and some other living expenses. For these reasons, online

education is ideal for participants who need to balance work and family.

This teachers training session will include about seven to eight activities and

assignments. Teachers are required to participate in all the lessons. After this training program,

as stated in the introduction, teachers are expected to implement what they have learnt into the

ISCIP which happens in August. This class is sponsored by the STS China agency, since this
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program is serving the purpose of helping students who are members of STS to study abroad.

According to STS official website, STS operates a language school and educational facility in

Oregon, USA. This language school only teaches English for college entrance education for

international students in the Oregon University System. We will use this language school as the

location to host this ISCIP in August.

Curriculum & Instructional Design

Objectives

By the end of this teacher training program, all participants will be able to:

Explore, discuss, and rationalize why it is important to have a low affective filter

classroom.

Create a study space that will help students lower their affective filter and feel

encouraged.

Reflect upon and analyze the differences of American & Chinese high school education

system.

Build instructional relevance by connecting past teaching experiences to help

international students understand the importance of collaborative learning.

Instructional Strategy

This program will include many different delivery formats. Since many participants are

experienced teachers, the main delivery format will be collaborative learning, which means there
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will be many discussions and brainstorming activities. Teachers will learn from each other and

work as a team.

In module 1, the format of delivery of the course will include guest speakers and videos.

Instructors will invite some international students who have studied abroad for over five years to

share their own experience of study in Chinese and American high schools. American teachers

can also share their experience of teaching in high school and their observations on high school

activities. During class, participants will also watch a couple of videos specifically targeted to the

three categories that were mentioned above. It will provide more insight and ideas of how

Chinese scholastic life differs from American high school through visual aids. American teachers

need to note that the class differences and culture shock that international students might

experience.

In module 2, American teachers will hear a lecture about lower students’ affective filters

and encourage students to communicate in English. They will learn the importance of

encouraging students and helping them develop interactive and extensible speaking skills. This

course will take one day, divided into two morning sessions and afternoon sessions. There will

be discussion and brainstorming activities during the course. In the discussion activity, teachers

will be put into a three-person group and will discuss why it is important to lower students'

affective filter, along with why it is challenging to teach students who have a high affective

filter. In the brainstorming activities, teachers will gather ideas of how to create a low affective

filter classroom.

Module 3 will be divided into two sessions to learn on the same day. In the morning

course, participants will be given a lecture about the importance of teamwork and how to make

sure all students are collaborating well in the group. After the lecture, there will be a one hour
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discussion activity; participants will form in a group of five and use Google search to conduct

group research on analyzing the importance of team commitment, and equal contribution for

teamwork. In the afternoon course, the topic is how to help Chinese students build a successful

team. This will be delivered to the participants by discussion delivery format. Since the

participants are all American teachers with teaching experience in this course, they will have the

opportunity to exchange their experiences and ways to help students succeed in teamwork.

For module 4, the instructors will give teachers a lecture about some useful ESL teaching

pedagogies such as desuggestopedia, input-hypothesis, natural approach, etc., which will be

selected by us to help students build their language confidence. After the lecture, teachers will

have a class discussion on which pedagogy they like most, and how will they implement it in the

ISCIP.

The final assessment will be the main task for module 5. It is designed to assess whether

teachers have learned all the key ideas from this training program. All the participants will attend

the live session. They will be divided into five groups, preferably three American teachers and

one Chinese teacher, each group collaborating together to complete the final assessment.

Participants will be notified of the final assessment requirement by day one of the program, so

that they can gather the group and prepare the final assessment ahead of time.

Module 1 - Introduction to the differences to American & Chinese high school education

system

American teachers will learn about Chinese educational system, and by the end of the

session, they will be able to identify the differences between Chinese and American high school

life. Teachers will be assigned homework. They are required to create a comparison list to
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describe the similarities and differences between Chinese and American high school life based

on three categories: school work, after school activities, and how classes are delivered. In

addition to assisting participants create the comparison list, instructors will provide a couple

graphic organizers to help participants write down some notes. Instructors will also introduce the

concept of the Venn diagram. According to Gunstone & White’s article (1986), Venn diagrams

have been used in numbers of educational contexts to illustrate the overlapping and divided

variance. It is a useful tool for analysis and classification of two or three contents.

Module 2 - The Concept of Affective Filter & Its Benefits and Challenges

The course objective is that participants will be able to create two activities/icebreakers to

motivate Chinese students to speak more English in class. This course is essential for teaching

ESL learners, because of the difference in emphasis between Chinese education and American

education. Chinese middle and high schools pay more attention to students' reading, listening and

writing ability. Students are always tested on reading and writing skills; schools do not pay

attention to speaking ability and there is almost no oral test in the exam, which is the reason why

Chinese students tend to feel uncomfortable speaking English. Thus, this situation leads to most

Chinese students being afraid to speak English because they are afraid to make mistakes.

Moreover, Christison and Murray (2010) mentioned that teachers have been aware for decades

that learners have different learning orientations and commitments to the learning process,

positive and negative, and that this ability is important for creating positive effects. Creating a

classroom environment with low stress and anxiety is crucial for learners to learn a language.

Therefore, we hope that through this course, American teachers can design their own activities or

break the ice to encourage students and give students more comfortable opportunities to speak

English.
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Module 3 - Collaborative Learning in Lowering Affective Filter

In the morning class, the instructor will talk about the importance of collaborative

learning and how to make sure all students will collaborate well. The purpose of this course is to

help Chinese students quickly adapt to the collaborative working environment. Due to the large

population of Chinese people, many schools accommodate 60 to 70 students in a class, so

teachers can only teach students in the form of lecturing. It is very hard to create different

activities such as group discussion, because it would be difficult to control the discipline of the

class. Conversely, in American classrooms, group discussion is one of the most common

classroom activities, and there are many assignments that require group cooperation. Therefore,

teachers need to help these Chinese students adapt to the learning mode of teamwork and learn

how to work and communicate effectively with other classmates. According to instructors' own

experience of studying abroad, they also found that sometimes in a group, not every member's

contribution is equal, and there are situations where one person is doing all the work and

completes all the tasks. This is not fair for the students. Therefore, the instructor will use lectures

and discussions in the morning session to give participants the opportunity to observe, research,

and give feedback on how to help high school students make equal contributions to group work.

In the afternoon class, teachers will discuss how to help Chinese students build a

successful team. Teachers need to understand that teamwork not only requires equal

contributions from each member, but that there are other rules that can be set up to make the

process smoother and more efficient. For instance, it is important to set the time and frequency of

group meetings, assign tasks to each group member, resolve conflicts of views, and learn how to

respect one's own members. Our objective is that participants will be able to use their experience

and reflect on their students’ high school projects to compose a poster, including key elements of
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teaching Chinese students how to work as a team or how to do projects. They can choose any

tool they are familiar with to create this poster. PowerPoint and Canva are both recommended

technologies. Their poster needs to be organized and succinctly list the elements they have

identified. This poster is a way to assess them, and hopefully they can learn from each other to

enrich their own teaching methods.

Module 4 - Teaching Tips in Lowering Affective Filter for ESL students

Module 4 will be divided into two sessions for one day. On the basis of module 2,

participants will learn more strategies to lower students' affective filters. The instructor will

introduce some popular pedagogy and some teaching tips for teachers to reference. For example,

desuggestopedia, mentioned by Larsen-Freeman and Anderson (2018, P.102), “has been

developed to help students eliminate the feeling that they cannot be successful and/or the

negative association they may have toward studying and thus to help them overcome the barriers

to learning”. The course format will be lecture and case study. Since participants will learn

several principles of teaching, we do not want them to be only kept in the teachers' heads, but

encourage teachers to actually apply them. Thus, we set the course objective that they will be

able to do a reflection on this course and be able to do a demonstration lesson with a chosen

approach. They need to choose one of the approaches learned in this class, write a two-page

reflection first, including the understanding of this approach and their application, and then

design a 15-minute demonstration lesson to demonstrate to the whole class.

Module 5 - Demonstration of Learning

Participants will create a reflection poster in the first session. The poster has to include

one to two things that they have learned and will implement in August classes. Participants will

prepare 15-minute oral presentations of their poster and participate in five minutes of Q&A from
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the instructor and the audience. Posters are widely used in the academic community, and most

conferences include poster presentations in their program. In addition, posters can also relieve

some of the stress for creating a visualization aid, because it is only one page long (Menke,

2014). Hence, participants will design and produce posters that include some useful teaching

strategies that they have learnt during the module 2, and based on Chinese international student’s

disadvantages (lack of teamwork experiences, fear of speaking English, culture shock, etc.) to

come up with a solution. This solution should aim to help students successfully transition from

the Chinese learning environment into American high school. The posters are an efficient

visualization tool for summarizing information and key findings to generate further discussion

about existing and emerging topics.

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Class Schedule

Modules Courses Class time Delivery format & course

objectives

Module 1: Observation and reflection on Chinese One day (two Guest speakers & video
Participants will be able to develop a
Introduction to education system and Chinese school sessions)
comparison list of how Chinese &
the differences to life American education system and school
American & life differ from each other.
Chinese high American teachers will come up with a
school education couple main activities in American
system high school life. (e.g. American high
school emphasis on sports and
student’s hobbies)

Module 2: Why is it important to lower students One day (two Instruction & Brainstorm
Participants will be able to create two
The Concept of affective filter, and encourage them to sessions)
activities/icebreakers to motivate Chinese
Affective Filter & communicate in English students to speak more in class.
It’s Benefits and Help students to develop interactive
Challenges and extensive speaking skills.

Module 3: Importance of teamwork and how to One day (two Lecture & discussion
Participants will be able to use Google
Collaborative make sure all students will collaborate sessions)
search to conduct their own research on
Learning in well. analyzing the importance of team
Lowering commitment, and equal contribution for
Affective Filter teamwork.

How to help Chinese student to build a Group discussion

Participants will use their experience and
successful teamwork
reflect on their students high school
project to compose a poster, including key
elements of teaching Chinese students
how to work as a team or how to do
projects.

Module 4: Teaching some useful ESL teaching One day (two Lecture & case study
Participants will be able to do a reflection
Teaching Tips in pedagogies to help lower student’s sessions)
on today’s course and be able to do a
Lowering Affective filters. (desuggestopedia, demonstration lesson with a chosen
Affective Filter input-hypothesis, natural approach, approach.
for ESL students etc.)

Module 5: Final assessment One day (two

Demonstration of sessions) Participants will create a reflection poster
Learning / in the first session, the content is about
what they have learnt and what they will
Designing a implement in August classes
Lesson Plan
Participants will prepare 15-minute oral
presentations of their poster and
participate in 5 minutes of Q&A from the
instructor and the audience.
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Program Evaluation Plan

There will be a short-term evaluation included in this program. The purpose of this

evaluation is to guarantee that all the teachers have learned the required skills and accomplished

all the objectives. This evaluation will begin on day one of the American teacher training

program and last until the final day of the August Student Culture Immersion program. The STS

will collect data related to teaching quality and student satisfaction, in order to improve and

evolve this cultural immersion program.

Part of the data will be collected from the ISCIP in August, which lasts about 20-25 days.

Students will receive three different surveys throughout the program. Students will be asked to

answer the first survey by the end of the first week. The survey questions will ask if they felt

comfortable in the study space and if they feel welcomed by the teachers on their arrival. The

program administrator will send out the second survey to the student after three weeks; this

survey will be focused on teachers’ behavior. Survey questions will include whether teachers are

giving students enough time and courage to speak and are teachers pushing their students to

speak in front of the classroom? The final survey, which will be distrube by the end of this

culture immersion program, will be an overall evaluation of how teachers do in this program.

This survey will include questions like: did teachers hold their office hours every week, do they

reply to the email within 24 hours, did teachers create an encouraging environment of study, and

so on.

Teachers need to know how to use computers/laptops as visual aids during classes.

Program instructors will introduce some websites or gamification tools during the training

program. Teachers are required to utilize some tools in the cultural immersion program. Program

instructors will introduce two types of websites for teachers to reference: first, gamification
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websites, such as Kahoot, Quizlet, etc., which increase students’ engagement and lower affective

filters. Those can be informal assessment tools to test students’ learning process. Some websites

allow students to answer questions as a team, which will help students to create bonds with their

teammates. The second type of website is for lecturing; websites like Canva, Mentimeter,

Jamboard, and Peardeck will be very useful to interact with students. These websites have lots of

templates and are easy to use, which allows teachers to create an interactive and engaging

learning class environment.

Since this training program will be a five-day session during summer break, teachers will

not have an immediate chance to implement what they have learned in the actual classroom.

since all the teachers already have rich teaching experience. Thus, our training will be more

focused on the collaborative learning aspect. Teachers will have plenty of opportunities to

discuss the topics or tasks.

Instructors will evaluate this training program based on Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of

Evidence (Kirkpatrick, 1994). Level 1 is reaction. It is hard for instructors to capture

participants’ every movement and evaluate if they are engaging and learning during the training.

Because all the participants are experienced teachers, they understand the importance of learning

and paying attention to class. Thus, instructors will hold some one-on-one meetings with a

couple of participants throughout the session, ask if they felt the course was hurried or too slow,

or whether they do not like the class content. Then we can make some adjustments to class

material or speed accordingly. If there is a teacher who is not actively participating or violates

classroom rules, the instructor will hold a one-on-one meeting with that teacher and chat about

the issues.
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Instructors will be mainly focusing on evaluating level 2 - learning. After the training,

teachers will teach to a group of international students who have just started to study abroad and

many of these students would be scared and sensitive to the new cultural environment.

Instructors want to make sure that teachers are absorbing the knowledge, understanding the

materials, and implementing some strategies into their lesson plans. Instructors also aim to

achieve all the program objectives by the end of the training, especially on how to create a study

space that will help students lower their affective filter and feel encouraged. By the end of this

training program, participants will create a reflection poster during the morning session with two

or three group members. The content should introduce what they have learned and what they will

implement in August classes. Participants will prepare oral presentations with a Q & A section.

For Level 3 -- behavior, again, teachers will be teaching lessons in the ISCIP, this is the

time to see if teachers are using the knowledge that they have acquired during the training. As

the program introduction mentioned before, Chinese teachers will assist American teachers in the

Student Culture Immersion program. The Chinese teachers will also be working as advisors and

teaching assistants to help students who have language difficulties and observe American

teachers’ classes. Chinese teachers need to make sure that the class environment is engaging,

encouraging and that students are participating in all class activities. There will be weekly

meetings for all teachers to talk about what needs to be done, what needs to be improved, and

what needs to be changed.

Level 4 is the result. As this essay mentioned in the beginning, students will be the judge;

they will evaluate whether they think this class prepared them for American highschool life or if

this program is valuable, and they will recommend it to other future international students. Since
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this program is a first-year program, there is no previous program that we can use as a reference.

There is a lot of exploration and experiments to do.

Conclusion

This teacher training program aims to assist teachers develop some ESL teaching skills,

more specifically, to better prepare teachers in terms of creating a low affective filter classroom

and collaborative learning environment. There are corresponding objectives for each module.

Instructors will not only introduce the ESL teaching approaches , but they will also include some

strategic pedagogies. After this teacher training program, all the American teachers can also

implement these strategies into their daily teaching. It will be beneficial for the teachers when

they encounter some native speakers who are willing to speak during the class. These program

designers also expect to extend this program beyond Chinese international students to include

other international students from different countries and different culture backgrounds. We want

to branch out and be able to receive more students and help them to participate in this culture

immersion experience before they start study abroad.

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Reference

Bustamante, J. (2020, April 12). Number of International students study in the US by country of origin,

2018-2019 [Pie chart]. Educationdata.

https://educationdata.org/international-student-enrollment-statistics

Christison, M., & Murray, D. E. (2010). What English language teachers need to know. In What English

language teachers need to know (pp.283). New York: Routledge.

Gunstone, R. F., & White. R. T. (1986). Assessing understanding by means of Venn diagrams. Science

Education, 70(2), 151-158. 10.1002/sce.3730700209

Kirkpatrick, D. L. (1994). Evaluating training programs: the four levels. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Larsen-Freeman, D., & Anderson, M. (2018). Techniques and principles in language teaching.

Menke, J. (2014). Implementation of online poster sessions in online and face-to-face classrooms as a

unique assessment tool. Journal of Chemical Education, 91(3), 414–416.

https://doi-org.colorado.idm.oclc.org/10.1021/ed400665n

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Student Travel Schools Foundation official website. http://www.stschina.net

Zheng, K., & West-Olatunji, C. A. (2016). Mental Health Concerns of Mainland Chinese International

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