Yesterday, a good friend and co-worker and I had the distinct pleasure of taking the SEI MTEL test to gain our Sheltered English Immersion endorsement. The story and reasoning behind why we both chose to take the test instead of taking the course is a post for another day. Today is simply a reflection on what the test was all about, how we studied, and how I think I did.
Put simply, the state of Massachusetts was sued not long ago for not providing proper teaching and education to students labeled as English Language Learners, or ELLs. Thus, all teachers need to have this endorsement proving that they have been educated on how to best teach and provide for these students. I opted for the test, which, if I pass, and I hope I do, means that my endorsement is complete and I can breath easy, at least for that part of my busy life.
The test itself consisted of 60 multiple choice questions, each with 4 possible answers. In general, the questions were complex, albeit with copious amounts of extraneous information. It was reminiscent of learning how to solve word problems back in elementary school, where the teacher would go over each line of the problem, discussing whether or not it was needed to answer the question. Once, or if I was able to cut through the wordiness to understand the question, it usually eliminated one or two choices fairly quickly. Truthfully, one question in particular had an answer so ludicrous that anyone would have been able to eliminate it. "You see students of a common culture who are new to the country all sharing answers to a research questions. When deciding what to do next, you.... yell at them, call their parents, fail them and assign detention." If only all answers were that easy to ascertain. (No, I did not choose that one.)
Anyways, the multiple choice questions were varied in what was covered, everything from linguistics, to laws, grammar and what would you do next style questions. Truthfully, the sampling on the official website is pretty accurate in terms of question style and topics covered. Other than the usual "throw away" answer, the other choices were all probable and required knowledge of the vocabulary, strategies and teaching tactics, sometimes called Just Good Teaching, or JGT.
How did I do on the multiple choice part? I'm really not sure. I didn't get them all right, I don't think, but neither did I get them all wrong. Some I was very confident on, others, less so. I flagged questions and went back, some answers I changed, some I left alone. I used the provided wet erase marker and booklet to jot down notes and cross out answers, trying to rationalize everything that was swimming in my head.
The Open Response section was just as advertised on the website. There are 5 parts, and there are plenty of templates online which outline what to do and how to do it. I highly recommend using those, especially anything provided by Judy Araujo, who, in my opinion, is a life-saver and has earned my eternal gratitude, though I do not know her personally. THANK YOU Judy!
That being said, the Open Response was not nearly as scary as I had anticipated, or in my case the day before, nearly hyperventilated over. They do provided mentor text excerpts, but more importantly, they do provide a step by step breakdown of what each part requires, and the order in which to complete it. This would have been awfully nice to know ahead of time, because half my battle leading up to the test was making sure I knew each step, in order. Totally not necessary!
Also, you only get 600 words per section. Yes, 4/5 sections had me scrambling to change verb tenses to save up space. Yes, I am verbose.
So, not knowing if I passed or not, these are some of the things that Cy and I did to study that were actually effective and not a waste of time.
- Using other peoples' quizlets, repeatedly, to get down the vocabulary.
- Asking each other questions.
- Reviewing the state's RETELL website sample questions over and over.
- Creating spur of the moment questions which mirrored the sample questions.
- Hauling out our textbooks, flipping to random pages, and breaking down vocabulary into tiers.
- Using the same textbooks and writing down sentence/discourse levels & reasons.
- Still using books, actually writing out objectives and strategies.
- Doing that together, then doing our own and checking each others work.
- Having a few strategies for each aspect in mind to use that we knew COLD.
- Reading/Listening/Speaking/Writing
- Choosing those strategies and modifying them for the different ELD levels.
- Memorizing the basic thoughts about each ELD level.
Those are the major sticking points to our plan.
Final thoughts:
- Yes, we wrote down and typed WAY more than we needed too.
- Yes, we over analyzed the open response, thinking the directions would be sparse.
- Those parts-feel free to skip.
- The lesson plan practicing though-that was smart. Though I had no idea what the mentor text would be, I had enough strategies and Bloom objective words in my head to work with. (Disadvantage in my subject area, my mentor text was on something I haven't had to teach in a decade.)
- Yes, the time does fly, and yes, you will likely use at least 3 hours.
- Yes, I think that maybe, just maybe, we might have passed.
Did you pass?
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