Description
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION The U.S. Embassy Tbilisi of the U.S. Department of State announces an open competition for individuals, private companies, educational institutions, and non-profit organizations to submit applications to carry out a program to offer virtual English language classes for B1/B2-level students using a multi-media Georgian-to-English curriculum designed to meet the needs of adult learners. Please follow all instructions below. Program Objectives: The U.S. Embassy seeks to provide virtual English language classes of 12 to 16 weeks to adult English language teachers seeking to strengthen their English speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills to strengthen their subject matter expertise. The program will target adult English language learners whose primary language is Georgian and who either certified as English teachers or who are seeking to become certified as English teachers. To support those classes, through a separate Notice of Funding Availability, the Embassy will select an appropriate virtual/distance-learning multi-media curriculum that can be used by instructors and students and provide access to that curriculum for teachers and students during the first year of the program. Applicants with the appropriate experience and capacity may wish to make proposals for either or both funding opportunities. The objective of this funding opportunity is to select a partner to organize classes who will: · Recruit and hire up to four instructors who are native Georgian speakers with strong English skills and experience leading groups in either formal or informal educational settings; ensure they complete the appropriate training to use the multi-media B1/B2-level Georgian-to-English curriculum selected by the Embassy; · Provide teachers with the necessary resources to provide virtual instruction, including laptop computers, software licenses, and appropriate compensation; · Recruit adult learners who speak Georgian as their primary language and are either teachers of English or people seeking to become certified to teach English in Georgia, noting that the majority of these adult learners should live and work in rural or mountainous regions where professional development opportunities are limited, and the number of highly qualified English teachers is low; · Select up to 320 adult learners for the course, using an assessment provided in the curriculum to ensure their current reading, writing, speaking and listening levels are appropriate for the course; · Organize virtual class meetings over a 12-16 week period, providing 50-80 hours of classroom instruction in this format, between February 1, 2023 and June 30, 2023; · Distribute to learners tablets provided by the Embassy which are preloaded with curriculum; · Monitor the class meetings to ensure instructors use the curriculum appropriately, as they were trained to do, and that learners remain engaged in the program with a goal of having at least 75 percent of those who start the course regularly attend sessions and complete the course; · Utilize the end-of-course evaluation tool to assess the reading, writing, speaking and listening levels of every student who completes the course; · Validate that end-of-course evaluation with standardized testing of a subset of program participants; and · Engage regularly with Embassy staff and the curriculum provider to ensure common goals are achieved. Participants and Audiences: Proposals should assume that all of the instructors for the program are native Georgian speakers with strong English skills and experience leading groups either in formal or informal educational settings, and that the adult learners are also native Georgian speakers representing diverse geographic regions, ages, and levels of experience using multi-media materials and technology.