02/03 Interview with ICC Instructors Peggy Heidish (Director) & Rebecca Oreto (Instructor)

Peggy Heidish

Rebecca Oreto

Intercultural Communication Center helps international students, faculty and administrators better understand the influence of culture on classroom dynamics and teaching. The international teaching assistants do not just struggle with language but the entire transformation both personal and cultural that helps them succeed as TA’s. This seemed extremely relevant to our selected territory of education and learning and so Alison and I had an hour long interview with Peggy and Rebecca. This interview turned out to be very useful for our research phase and below are some of the insights from this session.

They talked about their area of work to be very concentrated to campus requirements but is definitely a reflection of the outside culture. Peggy says, “Classroom culture is a reflection of the larger culture in which it exists.” They work with students and faculty on building academic fluency, presenting and communicating the knowledge they have, pronunciation and understanding the US classrooms.

The questions Peggy, Rebecca and ICC try to help their students with are:

1. What is surprising about the educational system in the country?
2. What are the challenges?
3. How to adapt?
4. How do the students/faculty view the U.S. classrooms?

Rebecca says, “ Classroom differences provide a window into how beliefs about teaching and learning can differ among cultures.” They help students/faculty understand the different modes of thinking. ICC framework helps faculty advisors, graduate departments and the ITA’s better understand the level of mastery linked to each stage of learning and have more realistic expectations about the process required to develop the fluency needed to interact with students.

Their framework takes this approach:

1. Help students understand the gaps and accept the need to change.
2. Provide a variety of models of clear and authentic academic English(e.g. online videos, TED talks etc.); making sure students know how to use these models.
3. Making them learn compensation strategies than becoming as fluent as the native language speakers.
4. Providing materials and exercises to help students develop the needed skills (e.g. rewording and simplifying concepts, making clear and concise definition, developing the language and cultural skills to use the examples effectively, using appropriate linking language)
5. Help them recognize cultural biases and differences in classroom context.
6. Help students transition into a phase where they can start to understand and try out the various language skills deliberately in insolation. Thus improving daily interactions and awareness of the language being used and understand the cultural differences and adapt to new changes.