87 Context When COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, and lockdowns began in Canada a week later, the ESL community – like so many others in Canada – scrambled to adapt to a new reality. Self-paced online learning was well established by 2020 and many messaging, collaboration, and social media apps had become household names. However, these online capabilities had yet to make much of an impression on ESL teaching and learning. Especially for students at the lowest levels of language proficiency, face-to-face classroom learning with plenty of over-the-shoulder assistance from an instructor was the gold standard. As teaching, of necessity, moved online, there were three immediate priorities: establish the technical infrastructure to make online learning possible; teach instructors how to use it; and help ESL learners understand, adapt to, and thrive in the new learning environment. Diana Agudelo and Lauren Hebert played key roles in responding to those initial needs. As the COVID crisis receded and students returned to the classroom, a new paradigm emerged – blended learning combining the best of classroom and online learning. Diana and Lauren continue to help instructors and learners make use of new resources and approaches. In Diana’s and Lauren’s Own Words Diana: Teacher Instruction and Collaboration I first heard of the Avenue learning platform at a conference in Regina sometime before the pandemic. I subsequently took Avenue training and urged other trainers to take it as well. In choosing Avenue as our learning platform, we first compared it to Google Classrooms. We settled on Avenue mainly because it offered a lot of ready-made services for LINC. That meant we didn’t have to create materials from scratch. We had plenty to work with from within Avenue. Recently, Lauren and I started a pilot program in which we volunteered to show new instructors how to teach a class on Avenue. We knew that two new instructors were feeling uneasy about teaching online for the first time. So, Lauren took one of the instructors and I took the other. We each spent an entire day with them, modelling how to teach a class online. In each case, the new instructor sat next to us so that they could see what we do and how we do it. They asked questions and we provided answers. In addition to the full-day sessions, we have the flexibility to respond to issues as they come up. When an instructor needs help, one of us will meet with the instructor, perhaps playing the role of a student in their class, to give them the opportunity to practice. A session of that kind might take no more than 10 or 20 minutes. In some cases, it will take place online. In other cases Lauren or I will visit the instructor at their worksite. We also started using Teams for instructor discussions during the pandemic. We wanted to create a virtual space for program-wide collaboration. We do that for each of the different language levels and for topics that demand attention from time to time. For instance, we have done sessions on assessment, sharing resources, and how to honor Black History Month. When the pandemic was over, we surveyed our instructors to see if they wanted to continue collaborating online. The answer was yes, so we made it part of our programming going forward. These online meetings take place three times in a four-month session, with participants coming from all three of our schools. Each session takes approximately one hour, and participants are paid for their time. Recently, we asked instructors if they want to have some of the collaboration sessions face-to-face rather than conducting them strictly online. As the answer was yes, we’re trying that now. When we do a face-to-face session, we conduct a separate session in each of our three sites. Online sessions bring participants together from all of the sites. CC-BY-NC-SA 2025 New Language Solutions Avenue Instructor Standards for Technology-Enhanced Language Learning, version 1.2
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