School District Renews TICKET Program, Bringing Teachers from Korea to Fort Lee

The Fort Lee Board of Education voted last week to renew and expand its partnership with Bloomfield College on a program that brings teachers from South Korea to Fort Lee schools for six-month stays to be mentored by Fort Lee teachers in an American classroom setting. The Total Immersion Course for Korean English Teachers (TICKET) program, now in its third year, will expand to the spring of this school year and continue for the 2011-2012 school year.

Through the TICKET program, English teachers from Korea partner with and are mentored by Fort Lee teachers, learning classroom management and parent outreach and communication skills and teaching techniques they can take back to Korea with them and employ in their own classrooms. They also act as second teachers in Fort Lee classrooms, working with students directly and providing extra support to the teachers and students they work with.

In the latest round of the program, which recently ended, Bloomfield College, which developed the TICKET program, placed 25 teachers in several New Jersey schools, including seven in Fort Lee at School No. 1, School No. 2 and School No. 3.

“Now in its third year partnering with the college, TICKET teachers have been assigned to classes at the K-3 grade level, which represents a substantial number of students who can benefit from addition classroom support,” writes Sharon Amato, supervisor of ESL/Bilingual and Foreign Languages for the district, in a letter to the Fort Lee Superintendent Raymond Bandlow urging the board to continue to support the program.

Amato also pointed out that on average, at least 10 percent of Fort Lee students don’t speak English as a first language, noting that about 75 Korean-speaking students are currently enrolled in the district’s ESL program.

“The TICKET program has been a resource to meet the needs of students and teachers in the classes where they have served,” Amato wrote. “Moreover, this program has provided a global perspective of teach and learning to both TICKET and mentor teachers.”

A recent survey of mentor teachers from Fort Lee revealed a generally positive response to and experience with the program.

“The TICKET program was valuable to my students because they enjoyed having somebody who shares their culture,” responded one second-grade teacher at School No. 3. “They enjoyed all the cultural lessons that my TICKET teacher planned for them. In addition, the students really liked having a second teacher in the classroom.”

A first grade teacher from School No. 1 responded to a question about the value of the program to the school community.

“We enjoyed learning about the Korean culture, and the students were proud to share our American traditions with [the TICKET teacher],” she said.

A Kindergarten teacher from School No. 2 reported that mentoring a TICKET teacher was a valuable experience for her for a number of reasons.

“It helped me become a better manager,” she said. “It also helped me better analyze my teaching style and philosophy.”

Amato enumerated the key strengths of the program as revealed by the mentor survey as follows:

• Facilitation of small group or one-to-one instruction
• Mutual learning about Korean/American culture
• Enhanced instructional strategies and methodologies
• Assistance with parent outreach and communication
• Assistance with classroom management
• Opportunities for self-reflection
• Increased student motivation
• Broadened attitudes and dispositions toward different cultures
• Promotion of a positive school culture and climate

In a letter to the Fort Lee Board of Education inviting “a select group of New Jersey school districts” to continue and expand the program, Dr. Peter K. Jeong, vice president of the Institute for Technology and Professional Studies at Bloomfield College, who specializes in setting up educational exchanges between Korea and other countries, noted the “exceptional work of Fort Lee teachers and administrators in making a great success of the [TICKET] program.”

“For three years now, the open and welcoming spirit of your teachers and principals, and the willingness of residents to open their homes to foreign visitors, has mad Fort Lee a model for this program,” Jeong wrote to the board. “Indeed, the Korean Ministry of Education has recognized Bloomfield College and the Fort Lee School District as partners of distinction in the area of international education.”

Bandlow, who visited South Korea with Jeong late last year to lay the groundwork for a student exchange program involving Fort Lee High School students, a program which has been put on hold for now, said the next group of TICKET program teachers is set to arrive in Fort Lee in May for their six-month stay.