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Hyejin Yoon
EDUC 994
December 11, 2018

Internship Final Report

I. Introduction

“I thank the Lord every day for I am not a teacher.” Commented [AM1]: LOL! This made me laugh as the start
to this paper  But yes, there is something to be said in this!
A renowned British scholar, David Crystal, said in response to an interview question about how

busy teachers can keep up with all changes in linguistic and pedagogy arenas. He added that he

thought the most important job in the world and the most difficult job in the world is teaching,

especially language teaching. The reason is that there is no aspect of human behavior more

complex than language, so teaching languages could be an endless undertaking. Commented [AM2]: Absolutely – I think you could feel the
students in 515 come to this conclusion this semester – and
grapple with thinking about this very issue!
Teaching is not a simple activity: teaching includes engaging and complex work. There is

not a moment when a person who is teaching that he or she does not attempt to manage several

complex tasks at once. Good teaching is like a swan’s graceful movement on a lake. There is

constant striving that is hidden from others’ eyes—the webbed feet flapping unseen beneath the

water are doing all the work in order to propel the graceful motion. Whereas effective teaching

looks seamless, the work underneath the surface is intense, ongoing and unending. Through this

internship experience, I was able to reaffirm how teaching is a complex, multifaceted activity. In

addition, the fact that there are various expectations for educators to accomplish from students

and administrators makes the occupation more challenging. So far, I mentioned that the

challenges and difficulties that teaching professionals have in their work places and those are

already studied extensively. Then, what about teacher educators? Who are they? What are they

doing? Are their work duties the same as teachers?

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According to Goodwin et al. (2014), one of the most crucial components which influence

student achievement in schools is a classroom teacher. Classroom teachers’ content knowledge, Commented [AM3]: This is both exciting and scary to think
about -
pedagogical skills, and positive attitudes are closely connected to students’ learning outcomes.

Hence, it is reasonable to investigate and do research regarding various topics on educators of

pre-/in-service teachers. In order to become a more effective and efficient teacher educator (TE),

an individual is required to develop his/her competencies by means of conceptualizing and

enacting his/her own professional learning. In other words, a TE’s professional development

entails deep understanding of what it means to teach about teaching and to engage in research

about educating student teachers and in-service teachers. Moreover, it is also important to

remember that the pedagogy of teacher educating differs from the one of teaching itself.

(Goodwin et at., 2014). Prospective TEs including me should have opportunities to understand

what TEs need to know and do in the academic arena and the broader education field.

My advisor and I discussed my internship right after my portfolio two review. Even

though I did not have any ideas on how influential and meaningful an internship can be in my

career, I put my trust in my advisor and decided to follow her advice and guidance. Though the

internship, I could reify my blurry dream of becoming an effective teacher educator. During the

working experience, I could explore the identity of a TE and what types of knowledge, skills and

attitudes are necessary.

I identified Dr. April Mattix Foster who facilitated, and Dr. Joan Kang Shin who

constructed the teacher education course, EDRD 515 Language and Literacy in Global Context

as my mentors. I was mainly supervised by Dr. Mattix Foster, but the reason why I also included

Dr. Shin as my mentor was that she was the person who constructed the online course. I

investigated the structure of the course and learned a lot from it. Therefore, I believe that it was
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my privilege to have two excellent teacher educators for my internship: Dr. Mattix Foster was an

awardee of GMU Excellence in Teaching Award, and Dr. Shin won an Online Course

Excellence Award for the course, EDRD 515. In terms of the course content, EDRD 515 was

well-suited to my needs. I was interested in the ESOL teachers’ intercultural competence and the

course provided various learning materials concerning teaching language and literacy to

culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students. I hoped that one day I would develop a

teacher training program for increasing teachers’ cultural sensitivities.

II. Education Environment

The teacher educators

As the course founder, Dr. Joan Kang Shin is an Associate Professor at George Mason

University’s College of Education and Human Development. She is also the Academic Program

Coordinator for Teaching Culturally and Linguistically Diverse and Exceptional Learners

(TCLDEL). Dr. Shin completed her PhD in Language, Literacy and Culture and became an

Assistant Professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2008.

When she joined George Mason University as an Associate Professor in 2016, she had a

decade of experience as a teacher educator both nationally and internationally in the context of

ESL and EFL. Not only that, she has designed, developed, and delivered numerous online

courses. Her professional career in teaching and researching has been prolific. She has authored

and edited 37 publications, presented in 136 conferences or event presentations, and designed

and conducted 30 specialized programs for English teaching professionals in 19 countries.

As the facilitator, Dr. April Mattix Foster is an assistant professor in the Graduate School

of Education at George Mason University’s College of Education and Human Development.

After receiving her PhD in Language, Literacy and Culture from the University of Pittsburgh,
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she joined the GMU faculty in 2012. Dr. Mattix Foster teaches doctoral-level courses in

International Education program and master-level courses in the International Baccalaureate and

TCDEL programs.

Prior to joining GMU, Dr. Mattix Foster had taught middle and elementary schools: The

Ellis school in Pittsburgh, PA, Golden Door Charter School in Jersey City, NJ, The Anglo

American School of Moscow, Russia, and The International School of Amsterdam, The

Netherlands. Owing to her teaching experiences in international settings, she might choose her

major academic field—international education, and TCLDEL. Dr. Mattix Foster is an active

scholar in the field by publishing a lot of papers and book chapters. According to her record, she

authored 17 journal papers, 4 book chapters, and 1 report. In addition, the faculty presented in 25

conferences and performed 22 event presentations. Especially Notably, last year she won the

George Mason University Excellence in Teaching Award.

The teacher education program

By entering into the Teaching Culturally and Linguistically Diverse and Exceptional

Learners (TCLDEL) program, an individual can achieve a Masters in Education (MEd) from

GMU. This is one of innovative academic programs that are offered by GMU’s Graduate School

of Education which is the largest and most comprehensive in Virginia. According to the online

descriptions about the program, this major is designed to prepare teachers to work with diverse

students around the world. Designed toward both pre- and in-service teachers, the expected

learning outcome from this concentration is being equipped with the theoretical and course

content knowledge, teaching skills, and rigorous and reflective attitudes to support students who

may require differentiated instruction due to their various needs. Whether a student is a language

learner, or has special needs, new and experienced teachers can be better educated and trained to
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meet the students’ demands by means of creating more equitable and socially just learning

environments around the world. In the TELDEL program, graduate students are expected to take

five core courses at the first stage and then, specialize in one of the seven programs to earn a

secondary certificate in areas: ESL/ESOL Special Education, ESOL Education for Practitioners,

Foreign Language, International Elementary, International Special Education, International

ESOL, and Advanced IB Studies.

The course

EDRD 515, Language and Literacy in Global Context, is one of the core courses that

students are required to complete for their MEd in TCLDEL concentration. This course is

delivered fully online using an asynchronous format via Blackboard learning management

system (LMS) in the MyMason portal. This course guides participants to explore key factors that

influence and enhance language learning, focusing on the relationships of language and reading

and the connection between language structure and ways to read. EDRD 515 introduces literacy

instruction and assessment for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners. It also

explores the sociocultural perspectives on literacy and requires participants to complete 20 hours

of PK-12 classroom fieldwork.

This course is not self-paced, which means participants are expected to complete one

module per week, meeting specific deadlines. A new module starts every Tuesday. In order to

complete a weekly module, participants need to read assigned articles or/and text book chapters,

watch video(s), participate in a discussion board, and finish any assignments and/or activities. By

identifying this course as a seminar, participants are expected to develop their ideas in a

collective manner. They are asked to engage deeply in discussion, challenge what they have
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believed, and construct new knowledge. The course aims to achieve a few numbers of

professional standards: ACEI, TESOL, INTASC, and ACTFL Standards.

When it comes to required texts, there are two books. One is Herrera, et, al.’s (2015)

Teaching reading to English language learners: Differentiating literacies and the other is Moats’

(2010) Speech to print: Language essentials for teachers.

The students

In 2018 Fall semester, there are 26 graduate students enrolled. Some of them are

currently teaching languages including Spanish, and Korean as well as English and some of them

are prospective teachers. The in-service teachers are working with students of various age levels

from kindergarteners to adults. Following their passion for language and literacy education, they

enrolled GMU’s MEd in TCLDEL concentration to be more qualified teaching practitioners by

earning teaching licensure and ESOL endorsement. From the Introductions assignment on the

Discussion Board (DB), I found out that students are from geographically diverse areas. For

example, some students were from different countries such as Germany, Latvia, Indonesia, and

Ethiopia, one from a different state—Tennessee in the US and the rest live relatively close to the

GMU Fairfax Campus in Virginia. Because of the careers they have led thus far, most expressed

high relevance of EDRD 515 to their teaching contexts.

III. Field Experiences

Observation the class

Dr. Mattix Foster gave me the right to access to her EDRD 515 online course to observe

the interactions between her and her students, and students throughout the course. I will first

explain how the classroom in the online platform looks, then delve more into the details of the
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module observations in the DB interactions. Just as any instructor or student at GMU would, I

only needed to log into Blackboard (Bb) Learning Management System (LMS) to access the

course and click on the relevant pages. Students were expected to begin a module on Tuesday at

12:01 AM, EST and finish by Monday at 11:59 PM, EST. There were fifteen modules total, and

each module was opened by the week. Students were able to access to previous modules, but not

ones coming future weeks.
Besides the valuable contents were available to the students through Bb, the organization
of the Bb pages was intuitive and user-friendly. Course management tabs were aligned-left and
only the pages that were relevant to the course was neatly listed. It was divided into five
categories: Course Information, Learning Modules and Weekly Topics, Assignments, Resources,
and Grades and Email. I noticed that the professor attempted to eliminate unnecessary factors
that could cause confusion. On the course page, only useful components were displayed. She
Commented [AM4]: Actually, they could access all 15
weeks from the start of the course – they just couldn’t post
on discussion board for each module until that specific week.
I do think because we have such a wide international course,
and international schools (and holidays) often mean that
there are weeks that some students will have limited access
to the Internet, so if they know they will be away or have
restricted access one week, they can look ahead to that week
and prepare some of the work and read that module’s
assignments.
Also, given the international nature of the students, it is
extremely common to have students have to leave their host
country for visa reasons – or other like reasons – sometime
during the course – which again means throwing a bit of
chaos into their schedule.

named the categories based on the students’ behavior patterns in an explicit way. That is, she

assisted participants to save their cognitive thinking steps such as ‘where should I submit my

assignment? Here or there?’ In order to submit assignments, students can just go ‘Assignment’

category directly and choose the right folder titled by assignments, for example ‘Reading

Response 4.’

Each learning module was indicated by the specific dates throughout the semester, so

there was no mistake on which module a student was to work on. For example, Module 11

activities and discussions occurred from November 6-12, 2018. Under the dates, only the week’s

required readings were listed and/or hyperlinked. What I liked most about this purposeful course

design was the consistency and organization. Only when I click on the hyperlinked dates, I was

able to reach to more detailed activities and assignments for that specific module.
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Once I moved onto more detailed information regarding Module 11, the first item on top

was a checklist for this module. To me, one thing this design represented was scaffolding. What

was expected from the learners was deployed front line so that students did not need to waste

their energy to list up their responsibilities. Each subsequent content knowledge was

accompanied by various modalities of learning and in mixed order, such as a warm-up video

first, then relevant readings followed by a video lecture. Considering the potentially differing

learning styles of students, the knowledge was presented in various ways that provided multiple

opportunities to learn. More evidence of scaffolding by the faculty was shown in guiding

questions in the stage of reading. Through guided reading activities, students could easily

prioritize knowledge that was presented within the chapter of the text.

This course is the collaborative learning space provided through the required Discussion

Board interactions. Because the facilitator fully promoted rich online discussions by responding

to participants ideas and providing extra useful learning resources, I was impressed of the

fullness of meaningful discussions that occurred in students’ DB interactions. The feedback from

the facilitator made student’s learnings more productive. There was the commonly clear

expectation to post a response to the initial prompt in any online coursework. At the beginning of

the week, students were supposed to respond to the initial questions in three days. Then, before

the module week finished, participants were expected to react to their classmates’ ideas with at

least two meaningful and reflective responses.

What I have observed discussion board interactions in EDRD 515 was multiple displays

of active learning, meaningful learning, and the power of technology as a valuable tool for

learning. A constructivist approach to online learning was a fundamental conceptual framework.

In other words, by setting the online learning stage for learner-centered, knowledge-centered,
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and community-centered environments, learning was observed in the rich DB interactions among

these teacher-students in both implicit and explicit ways. As learners were involved in both

learning and practice, the module topics were closely relevant to their teaching contexts. The

learners’ content knowledge came alive in their teaching experience, making their learning more

meaningful and culturally responsive. Each student’s valuable and active online presence and

contributions have added to the concrete building of new knowledge to impact their daily

practice in the classroom, ultimately leading to powerful experiential learning. Moreover, the

accessibility of this online course from all over the world makes teacher learning more diverse

and richer. The TE’s active facilitation and student participation were allowing the course to

become a fertile ground for teacher learning.

IV. Reflection

This internship aligned well with my professional goals of teaching students at the

graduate level in a teacher education program. By performing my internship, I was allowed to

investigate the process of designing the online course from a course provider’s perspective. The

process included the development of the syllabus and curriculum for the course and the

management of instruction in the online learning environment. Moreover, when I performed the

Wrapper roles in DB interaction, I could contribute my knowledge that I had acquired from my
previous experiences as a language teacher and from my doctoral study in Teacher Education
and Multilingual/Multicultural Education specializations to the summaries of module
discussions. I attempted to make a module summary synthesis a reflective tool. After the course
finishes, students and the instructor can refer back to what was discussed, and the records will be
Commented [AM5]: This was a significant activity you
performed every week! Don’t be shy about talking about the
thought, time, and effort that went into synthesizing all the
discussion and learning that was happening for the students
each week!  The class was large, and we often had three
discussion strands with six groups going on with multiple
threads, so there was a great deal going on weekly. The
synthesis made sure that all students – from all the different
groups – were able to reflect on the important ideas of the
week and have a documented record of the those key points
for their own future reference.

resources on a particular theme. In the future, I might run my online course. Then, I would like to
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adapt the strategy of Wrapper in order to promote rich discussion activities. By the end of the
internship, Dr. Mattix Foster offered me a part of her works with regard to evaluating students’
outcomes. Thanks to her good modeling, I was also able to learn how to assess students’ learning
and progress and evaluate their performances in the course based upon the syllabus expectations.
For the successful completion of this course, the instructor’s expectations were clearly presented
on the syllabus with detailed rubrics and the instructor sincerely complied with them. Also, I
reaffirmed from my supervisor’s example that rich feedback provided from a facilitator could be
a great learning resource for students.
My Suggestion
Given this course is for relatively new graduate students of which some are possibly from
other countries, the 26-page syllabus written in English—the language which could be second or
foreign for some students is probably intimidating. Actually, I got an email from a Korean
participant asking about the assignment ‘Option for Reading Response.’ For students, the
information of assignments and evaluation is important. Hence, I would like to suggest creating
and uploading a short video clip in an introduction page to examine the crucial information for
the successful completion. I think that it is a similar process to a face-to-face course. Usually in a
F2F course, professors set a time aside to review syllabuses and the meaningful time is followed
by a question and answer session in the first week of a new semester. Also, I think that the
information hierarchy in the syllabus seems to be quite complicated to follow. So, it was not easy
for students to understand it at one glance, they should study it. If instructors maintain
consistency in using italic and uppercase letters, indenting, numbering, and bullet pointing on the
syllabus, that would be great resource of information, not a pain for students.
Commented [AM6]: Yes! This is a great idea – and I
normally have one for my TCLDEL courses… I was
assigned this course three days before the start of the
semester, so getting it built and adding my own materials and
so forth had to be done so quickly that the video didn’t
happen. BUT…. I am teaching this course again in the
spring, and I’ve already got the intro video recorded. 
Commented [AM7]: Indeed – Mason has syllabi that have a
great deal of required verbiage and documentation (which is
required by the College). When I came to Mason, I was
shocked when I first saw the syllabi as I had come from
universities that had 4-7 (maximum) page syllabi that did not
include the incredible level of detail and depth that Mason
syllabi have. To be honest, I really didn’t like the syllabi
like this in the beginning, but the longer I’ve been here, the
more I realize how important it is (for accreditation and for
students) to have everything spelled out – almost like a
contract, so there is no confusion between rights, duties, and
responsibilities of both the student and the instructor.
Commented [AM8]:  This made me smile. Each course
in TCLDEL is assigned to a “lead faculty member” (Dr. Shin
is the lead faculty for this course), and the faculty member is
responsible for keeping a “master syllabus” up-to-date for
the course – and it that syllabus that all other instructors of
the course will use as the “shell”. So anyone else teaching
the class will use that syllabus, and add any of their own
special features to the syllabus, but leave the rest of the
syllabus intact. Two years ago when we moved to this
system, a very lovely GRA was tasked with making all of the
faculties very diverse looking syllabi consistent… which was
not an enviable task… The syllabi that we have now are the
result of that uniformity project – and the course lead’s
semester-ly updates. Interestingly, the doctoral syllabi that
you are used to seeing are a bit different because they are
solely based on the faculty’s own preference for style and
structure (for the most part – as there are still required
elements and wording that we must use). But in general,
they are more reflective of a faculty member’s organizational
structure and styling.
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