InterPlay with Ruth Schowalter

Wait! What? Why am I teaching English language communication online? And, really, is it becoming the new normal? Yes! After teaching almost 200 hours online (150 academic & 50 InterPlay), I can proclaim a resounding Yessssssssssssssss.... It’s the 2020 Pandemic. I’m an educator. I teach international students advanced oral English communications at the Georgia Tech Language Institute (GTLI). Hop on the rollercoaster! Suddenly in the spring, I went from teaching students face-to-face sharing a physical classroom space together to conducting classes with them from my laptop, the etherspace whooshing around us. The New Normal. Seeing students in square tiles across my computer screen. I was teaching Advanced Academic Speaking to undergraduates at the GTLI. The students came from Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Yemen, and the Congo. That etherspace managed through Bluejeans (Georgia Tech’s online platform for classes) sometimes connected us beautifully. Other times, students...

Using InterPlay in the English Language Classroom A license to play in the classroom! Imagine these teaching objectives for an elementary English as a Second Language class called “Talk More”: 1) Help students find more comfort and ease when speaking in English. 2) Increase students’ sense of English language efficacy and communication confidence. This past May, being given the permission to use “pure”  InterPlay  in a 3-week intensive English “Talk More 1” course consisting of 18 hours of instruction, thrilled me! I would engage the “whole student body” – body, mind, and heart! This kind of “whole body” engagement was going to be especially important in this unique class comprised of students from two distinctly different cultures – six Panamanians and six Japanese! I expected the students from Panama to have more expressive ease than students from Japan, but I didn’t know how this 50/50 combination would blend the differences, allowing the students a give-and-take ...