TEACHER-TRAINING WITH A TWIST - A COLLABORATIVE PROJECT IN NORTH-CAROLINA

With the growing demand across the country for foreign language instru ction in the elementary school, there is an urgent and increasing need for qualified teachers. One of the reasons for the current shortage o f trained elementary school foreign language teachers is the serious s hortage of qualified teacher educators. This article describes a three -year teacher training project that aimed to improve the training of e lementary school foreign language teachers at institutions of higher e ducation. The components of the training model were based on the princ iple that, in order to be successful, teacher trainers should have exp erience observing and teaching at the level for which they will be tra ining others. The training model paired North Carolina teacher trainer s with experienced elementary school teachers who served as their ment ors. The teacher trainers participated in the following activities: 1) an intensive four-day seminar on elementary school foreign language m ethodology (also attended by their elementary school colleagues), 2) o bservations of their partners' elementary school language classes, 3) teaching of their partners' elementary school classes, 4) collaboratio n with the elementary school language teachers in the development of a teacher education curriculum, and 5) peer coaching with a new group o f teacher trainers. These teacher educators were then responsible for incorporating the new material and methodologies into their universiti es' curricula and providing elementary school language instruction to undergraduate foreign language students preparing to become teachers.