NOTE: This information only applies to learners who matriculated prior to the fall of 2019 and have not already waived the field experience requirement. The curriculum has been updated and the field experience is no longer waiveable as of March 1, 2020.
-------------------------------
It is my understanding that in the past students generally submitted their Field Experience Waivers right before their last semester. You can, of course, do this, however if you believe that you are eligible for a Field Experience Waiver, it's best (in my opinion) to get that taken care of as early as possible. Why?, you ask. Well, when you waive the Field Experience (APLING 690) you still need to take an elective in its place. If you wait until the last minute to apply for a waiver you have to take any ol' elective offered in the spring. If you take care of the waiver earlier on, you have a choice of electives to take in its stead.
So, what do you need to get the waiver?
If they are currently teaching or have taught in the recent past.
In order to obtain a waiver you need to get a letter from a supervisor stating that you have taught for their institution, on formal letterhead.
The letter should include:
- Institution Name
- Your supervisor's name and title
- Your name
- What time frame you were teaching for them
- Evidence of a minimum of one year fulltime teaching experience in an ESL, bilingual, or foreign language setting.
- What language courses were you teaching? (e.g.: FRENCH101, Introductory Latin, Intermediate Greek, ESL 1)
- How often were you teaching these courses? (e.g.: ESL 1, every fall; ESL level 3, Every other fall)
- Was the teaching part time or full time
- How many hours spend on average per week in the classroom
- If you had department mandated office hours, how many hours per week did you have office hours?
The letter should be written on official letterhead and should include the contact information of the person signing it.
Keep in mind that this is not an evaluation of your teaching, simply an acknowledgement that you are employed as a teacher by this institution currently, or at some point in the recent past.
Please mail letters to:
Department of Applied Linguistics
Attn: Online Program
University of Massachusetts Boston
100 Morrissey Blvd.
Boston, MA 02125, USA.
Please scan and keep a copy of this letter for your own copies. If you would like to email a PDF copy to applied.linguistics@umb.edu (which the original paper copy makes its way to us via post) this is OK too :-)
If you have questions, please let us know!
AK
PS: If you find this blog post helpful, please hit the "like" button :)
