Mary Lou McCloskey

Mary Lou McCloskey, an author and educator in the area of English for speakers of other languages, has worked with teachers, teacher educators, and departments and ministries of education in 27 countries on 5 continents and in 34 of the United States. Below are a few of her past and present projects and activities, more or less in chronological order: She taught multi-grade classes at Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School in Syracuse New York, where she learned to dance the Funky Chicken. She worked with English teachers from throughout central and southern Europe at a summer institute in Czechoslovakia right after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The decision to divide into Slovakia and the Czech Republic was made while she was there! She worked with English language educators from all ethnic and racial groups in South Africa right after the end of Apartheid, where students sang to her in four-part harmony! She worked with teachers in South Africa and Mozambique on content-based English language education, focusing on the content of HIV/AIDS education. Educators reported that it was easier to discuss those issues in English, because it felt more "scientific". She served for five years as consultant to a program sponsored by USAID in Egypt, where she was involved in several projects that included preparing Ministry and Faculty professionals to work with teachers of young learners of English, materials development with faculty and ministry to develop a text for pre-service teachers of English, and working with Egyptian educators to develop teacher education standards for English teachers in Egypt. Shokran for the many experiences and wonderful friends made! She served on the Advisory Board for Global English Online Learning; and worked with the E-Language Project, collaborations between the United States Department of Education and the Chinese ministry of education, to develop free web-based language learning in English and Chinese. They're still working on solving the English online challenge! She developed Project STEPS, a program for DeKalb County, Georgia teachers to receive their endorsement in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, while providing a summer language program for English learners in the county. Variations of the courses developed are still being used in ESOL endorsement courses in Georgia. She has taught at Georgia State University, Emory University, The University of Oklahoma, Florida International University, The University of Memphis, and has consulted at many others. She currently teaches a course on teaching english to speakers of other languages at Agnes Scott College, in Decatur, Georgia. She was president of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, and served on the initial TESOL Task Force to develop TESOL/NCATE Teacher Standards in English as a Second Language. She designed the curriculum (with colleague and co-author Lydia Stack) and trained teachers at the Teaching Tolerance through English program in Balatonlelle, Hungary for middle school teachers and students in Central and Southern Europe for seven years. There, she learned to say "Good Morning" in 10 languages. She serves as English Language Specialist at The Global Village Project, a special-purpose middle school for teenage refugee girls with interrupted education, where she learns about culture every day. She directed a project for the US State Department to develop an anthology of adolescent literature for EFL learners, American Themes. The book, Strategies for teaching English Language, Literature, and Content, is an offshoot of that project. She hopes one day to write a children's book about Lena, the elephant who (really!) lived in the alley behind her house in Mayville, New York when she was a child.