Before participating in the curriculum design project, the process of designing a needs assessment was unfamiliar to me. I had worked with syllabus design and lesson planning in the past through a TESOL certificate program and international volunteer teaching experience, but had very limited experience in understanding how to systematically and effectively assess and incorporate student and teacher preferences and needs to fulfill project goals. An awareness that our needs assessment would be used to enact change within a community in need of additional support allowed me to more fully engage with the process and appreciate its usefulness.
The educational program we are working is situated in Nicaragua and operates under the philosophy of SONATI. The student population we are working with is comprised of adolescents who meet 2 hours every Saturday. In following with SONATI’s goals of “empowerment through conservation and free environmental education”, we sought to design an outline for a year long curriculum that would incorporate English language learning through environmental awareness.
The process of creating our NA began with a skype interview conducted in Spanish with a administrator of the program. The purpose of this interview was to gather valuable information about the administration, students and class instructor that could be synthesized and analyzed to create survey questionnaires. Following the Needs Assessment Interview guidelines we had learned in class, we formulated interview questions for the administration that were categorically descriptive. These questions were designed to elicit details of the program and verification of information we had previously found through research. After greeting the administrator, we asked questions within the framework of a polite and relatively informal discourse.
The woman we interviewed demonstrated a genuine investment in these students and the ideals of the program. Her visible determination to enact change and progress was additionally motivating for me as it reiterated the importance of sharing that same commitment as an active contributor to the educational progress of these students.
The information we received through this interview guided the creation of our questionnaires. We learned that there will be a new teacher teaching the class, the class will meet for two hours every Saturday, students possess a low proficiency level, and student and teachers have access to various technological resources within the classroom including projectors and computers. Individual questionnaires were written for the students, the administration and the on-site volunteer teacher based on this information. Each of these three questionnaires was appropriately formatted for its corresponding audience. While the student questionnaires mostly targeted degrees of interest (playing games or working with animals), the administrative questionnaires addressed logistical concerns such as the duration of volunteer teacher experience for most teachers and how the philosophy of the SONATI program is typically implemented within the classroom.
The questionnaires were delivered via email and efficiently completed and returned for our analysis. The results of these questionnaires elaborated on our previous findings from the interview and offered us additional information that would prove critical for developing our curriculum. We learned that the new teacher is a non-native speaker of English who has never taught English before. She is interested in using games to advance learning of English through an environmental focus. We also learned that the students of the classroom come from a mix of exposure to English and a variety of proficiency levels. These students interests aligned with that of the teacher in respect to the desire to use games and projects to advance their learning. Responses to our question about why they want to learn English elicited broader social implications about their current social status and awareness of the broad sense of opportunity that is generally identified with the English language. These results further highlighted the importance of our involvement in this project.
Kelly, Catherine and I interpreted these findings to develop a curriculum that reflects the interests of community members and the overarching SONATI program within which their classes are framed. Our year long CBI program is designed to combine English language instruction with environmental education through adequate consideration of student skill level and administrative concerns.
The NA serves as a fundamental tool for increasing learner motivation by reminding learners that educators are invested in their progress and want to address their needs and interests. The process of creating a needs assessment introduced me to the strategies through which successful teachers and administrators enact meaningful change in an educational program. Throughout the NA process I was continually reminded of our role as catalysts for this change. Change that may begin on a small scale has the potential to transform communities. I look forward to discovering how the following stages of our curriculum design project may lead to this feasible goal.