By Steve A. Pell
Re “PCC Faculty Assn. Vows to Sue Over School Calendar”
[Mr. Pell, a professor of English as a Second Language at Pasadena City College, prepared these remarks for the PCC Board of Trustees last Wednesday.]
If we knew then, what we know now.
Since the academic agenda of Pasadena City College is to serve college students where students are the reasons we, as employees, are employed, helping “ALL” of our students, and not just some, seems to be the best place to start.
A large amount of our students here at PCC are non-native English speakers who are enrolled in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes. Without such instruction in ESL, these students would have a challenging battle trying to successfully pass classes in other disciplines.
Offering two short-term ESL classes back-to-back as we do on this new-term system is setting up our language students for failure, possibly creating a higher dropout rate. In the field of Linguistics and Language Learning, research supports that language learning takes time. By asking a student to solidify his/her English language skills in two short back-to-back summer sessions, we are not providing the time needed for successful acquisition. Whereas, having those two, six-week, short-term intercessions sandwiched between a full semester, provides any language learner a better amount of practice time to hone their English language skills. It's pedagogically more efficacious. Learning a language in two, short six-week stints does not benefit our students.
Can any of us learn Mandarin or French in 12 weeks? English is one of the most challenging languages in the world to learn. It is absurd to think that students can, with a high success rate, learn English (or shore up skills) in two, short six-week sessions. Perhaps native English speakers can perform well in science classes or math in two back-to-back intercessions, but that only serves “SOME” of our population. Isn't our duty to serve “ALL” of our students?
In the discipline of ESL, this new two-term summer schedule expects that a student would, theoretically, move from identifying as a low-level English speaker at the end of the spring term to native-like English fluency by the beginning of the fall semester.
Our two university transfer- level language class fall between the former and the latter. So in ESL, we do not offer any classes in the second term because at this fast of a pace, we are expecting an almost impossible outcome from our students. The result of this is that students actually now take longer to graduate. Are we serving all of our students, or just those whose English language skills are already set? We hear that with the Hope and Heart message weekly. It seems that the Hope part is we “hope students can pass through this rapid paced system.” The heart part seems to be missing. “Where is that heart” when we are only meeting the needs of a portion of our student body?
Perhaps we need to think about the real purpose of these issues. Were two, six-week back-to-back terms created to make the work we all do lighter?
Shouldn't our agenda be to ensure that PCC is a good, solid, academically sound institution where we all play a part at an institution where students actually learn, instead of collecting a role-call of classes on their transcript.
The two-term summer semester may work for some students and for some employees, but it does not work for 100 percent of our students.
I am responding to this email chain because I believe we need to think about why we work at a college and not at the Rand Corp. or for the Cheesecake Factory.
I believe we are here to educate human beings: Broaden their perceptions of the world, truly “educate.” Whether that education helps them procure a job or only enlightens them, we are here to help people advance themselves. The debate of time spent in a course is an academic one. When we start to think about how fast we can do our work, how fast we can “process” paperwork, we lose sight of our college's mission.
Speed vs. quality.
Sounds like McDonald's Community College.
Hamburgers anyone?
