Instructor Teaches Where His Students Were Born

These teachers have always taught English to foreign born college students in the U.S., and this year, they are teaching in Mexico. They are working with students who will one day teach English, helping them with lesson planning and developing material for them. DP

By BETH MCMURTRIE

chronicle.com: John Whitney has spent 25 years teaching English to foreign-born students. Most of that time he worked at universities, teaching relatively well-off, well-educated students who had come to the United States to earn a degree.

For the past 10 years, though, Mr. Whitney has been an instructor at Chemeketa Community College, in Salem, Ore., teaching a very different type of student.

Most are immigrants struggling to master a language they need to know to get a decent job. Many of them came to the United States as children, young enough that they never developed a strong grasp of their own language, but old enough that they have had trouble adapting to their new one.

"Everybody is trying to figure out what the best way is to serve this population and help them be successful college students," says Mr. Whitney.

He finds his job at Chemeketa particularly rewarding. But he wants to do more. So last year, Mr. Whitney and his wife, Maria Dantas-Whitney, an assistant professor of teacher education at Western Oregon University, applied for Fulbright fellowships.

Their plan was to travel to Latin America, to better understand the educational systems from which many of their students came. About 45 percent of Chemeketa's 900 or so English-as-a-second-language students are from Latin America, most of them from Mexico, Mr. Whitney says.

Now the couple is at Benito Juárez Autonomous University at Oaxaca, in Mexico. There he teaches students who will one day themselves teach English. With them he explores methodology, lesson planning, and materials development. Ms. Dantas-Whitney teaches courses on curriculum development and methodology, and conducts research and a teaching practicum.
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