I'm enjoying this focused discussion a great deal and would like to throw
out another question for the facilitators and the group.

 

At two separate registrations this year, we've had a female student who said
that she could only have a female teacher due to her religion. In one of the
cases, this was not possible at the desired class site, so we offered the
student a class at another site, taught by a female - but the student
refused because that teacher was a nonnative speaker of English.

 

I was wondering if other programs have explicit policies on if/when to honor
requests for a class taught by .

 

1) a female (request due to religion); 

2) a native speaker of English (request due to a variety of reasons - desire
for an authentic 'American' accent, etc.).

 

For what it's worth, we've been able to handle culturally sensitive issues
in the classroom on a case-by-case basis. Examples: Honoring female
students' requests to do one-on-one pairwork with a female partner, for
religious reasons; allowing students to take breaks from class when they
need to break their religious fast and/or pray.

 

I'd also mention that we have some nonnative English speakers teaching in
our program, and I have gotten very good feedback from students on them. 

 

Does anyone have suggestions?

 

Betsy Lindeman Wong

Lead ESL Teacher

Alexandria Adult and Community Education

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