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May 2, 2008
Forty teachers and administrators (both
ESL and mainstream) will soon complete the five-month CAL-WIDA CLIMBS course, co-sponsored by the VCLA at Saint Michael’s
College and the VT Dept of Education, title III division and taught by CAL’s Emily Evans and Vermont’s Kathy McLean.
This is the second pilot of CLIMBS, and this lively and informative course will undoubtedly be offered more broadly in the
near future.
At Saint Michael’s College, the CREATE curriculum reform grant is under way, with the goal of revising
curriculum in Education and Applied Linguistics so that all teachers graduating from SMC will leave prepared to teach the
increasingly large numbers of ELLs in US classrooms. Teams of teachers from three school districts (Burlington, South Burlington
and Winooski) are collaborating with SMC faculty on 8 funded projects that will develop or strengthen instructional programs
to allow full inclusion of ELLs in appropriately accommodated mainstream classes; these classes will serve as placement sites
for student teachers. The collaborative projects include: the development of a sheltered HS science class and of a fully inclusive
HS World History class, cross-teaching in Special Ed and ESOL, a MS ELL Grading Guide, an Early Literacy Program for MS, using
video streaming to build background knowledge, and transforming WIDA model performance indicators for MS science. Teams will
report on the progress and effectiveness of the new models at the CREATE grant’s fall conference.
ESL teacher
Jennifer Opel, classroom teacher Denise Parker and principal Judi Maynard from South Burlington School District did
a presentation on team teaching at the spring CREATE conference at SMC. Using video clips and student work and drawing from
principles of SIOP and UbD, these educators spoke eloquently about the administrative support and collegiality that enabled
them to shift away from push-n or pull-out models into a model of full inclusion for ELLs, and about the benefits they are
already seeing for both ELLs and non-ELLs in the classroom. Part of this presentation will be given at the upcoming NNETESOL
conference, as well.
VCLA SIOP trainer Carmen Cripps has been asked to teach SIOP in the Education Department at Plymouth
State course, so that their prospective teachers will be ready to differentiate instruction for ELLs in their mainstream classes.
ELLs in the mainstream—Mary Ellen Vogt, one of the developers of SIOP, was the presenter at the spring conference
of the Vermont READS Institute. She spoke primarily about the development of literacy coaching models, and devoted an afternoon
workshop to ELL instruction.
Rebecca Wurdak presented three professional development workshops in January, March, and
April at Caledonia North Supervisory Union in Lyndonville, VT. These workshops were an integrated part of the district’s
year-long strands of learning for mainstream teachers and focused on ELL students in the mainstream classroom. The groups
of teachers were Grades 3-8 Literacy, Grades K-4 Math, and Grades 4-8 Science and Math. The four main points conveyed in the
workshops were 1) The status of ELLs today in VT and predictions for the future; 2) Second Language Acquisition; 3) Challenges
faced in each targeted subject area and ways to help; and 4) SIOP. All three workshops were a success and have sparked an
interest in continuing to be proactive in ELL issues and SIOP. Thank you to CNSU for their support of ELLs and willingness
to prepare their teachers for the future. VT Report to NNETESOL
– February 2008
A request for news sent out via the Vt ESOL list-serv netted the following: 1.
From ESL teacher Sky Norton (ANESU), the following concerns— More assessment materials available for districts
with small budgets. More time for collaboration and communication among state teachers, including sharing of resources Need for guidelines on how to proceed with students who are both ELL and SPED 2. From former president Linda
Walsleben, Burlington School District: BSD is planning an Intensive English Language Program for the 2008-09 school year
to address the needs of students who could benefit from more intensive English language instruction. The hiring of 2.0
ESL teachers has been requested to support this program. The program will focus on the elementary and high school levels. BHS ESL and reading teachers are working on improving literacy instruction at the HS level. They will be meeting with
the district literacy coach to review their program and identify and purchase more materials for adolescent readers. There
are presently about 465 students receiving or eligible for direct instruction in English language. About 21% are ELP
Level 1, 25% are ELP Level 2, 25% are ELP Level 3, and 25% are ELP Level 4. The remainder are ELP Level 5. An
article by Linda, Signs of Success, appears in the Winter 2008 issue of Journal of Staff Development and details the impact
of the QUEST program on teacher practice. The QUEST website continues to develop as an important tool to support teacher
learning about ELLs. The URL changed in the last few months, so you can find it at: http://hunt.bsdvt.org/~lwalsleben/quest/index.htmlI am also developing an ESOL website for parents and community members. It's a work in progress but can be
found at http://hunt.bsdvt.org/~lwalsleben/esol/index.php. It will eventually be linked off the Diversity and Equity page on the district website. Burlington School District
will participate in the CREATE grant at SMC. Very exciting! A group of teachers from BSD will participate in CLIMBS
this semester. The Vermont instructor of CLIMBS is a former BSD ESL teacher, Kathy McLean. From Rita MacDonald at VCLA, CREATE and Saint Michael’s College: The CREATE grant (curriculum reform, designed
so all teachers graduating from SMC will be prepared to teach ELLs) has kicked into gear. SMC faculty from Applied Linguistics
and Education met with faculty from our 3 partner school districts (Burlington, S. Burlington, Winooski) to discuss needs
in K-12 ESL education and to begin planning collaborative, grant-funded work to enhance local K-12 ESL instruction, provide
SMC student teachers placements where they can observe best practice in ESL ed, and inform curriculum revision. The
VCLA co-sponsored CLIMBS course began last week, with 40 teachers from around the state enrolled. The course is the second
pilot of the course developed by CAL and WIDA, and is taught by co-instructors from CAL and VT. VT’s instructor is former
Burlington ESL teacher and current SMC adjunct Kathy McLean. The course meets once/month for 5 months, with online work in
between meetings. There will be a CLIMBS Training-of-Trainers scheduled for the summer, probably somewhere in the Midwest. Two VCLA co-sponsored lectures by Newbery Medal winner Linda Sue Park (A Single Shard) were well-attended by faculty, students
and local teachers. Ms. Park spoke about the importance of using multi-cultural literature in K-12 classrooms. A one-year
post-training visit to the SIOP-trained teachers (VCLA, 2006-2007) in the Barre School District showed some really impressive
integration of SIOP into the language, conceptual framework and practice of content teachers! Teachers in Barre have formed
some very creative team-teaching arrangements, and their SIOP-trained teachers (with VCLA support) are now exploring SIOP
coaching as a means of further disseminating the methodology of sheltered content instruction. ESL Coordinator Elaine Harrington
(eharrshs@u61.net ) can provide more information. From Rebecca Wurdak: ·
The first of 4 in-service workshops designed to facilitate the integration of serving ELL students in the mainstream class
happened on February 21 in Caledonia North Supervisory Union. This workshop was presented by Rebecca Wurdak to K-2 mainstream
teachers and para-professionals from several different schools. The focus was on teaching math to ELL students. It addressed
some of the struggles they may face and ways to help, including using the SIOP method. Integrating ELL issues and approaches
into the district’s in-service strands has been two years in the making, starting with a survey of needs and interests,
to offering three optional one-stop workshops, to being fully integrated into the in-service plan. The workshop was very appreciated
and received a lot of positive feedback. The next workshops will be in February, March, and April and offer a focus on integrating
ELL students in grades 3-8 Math, 3-8 literacy, and science. Submitted by: Rita MacDonald ( rmacdonald@smcvt.edu ) Rebecca Wurdak ( rwurdak@yahoo.com, rwurdak@sau88.net ) VT Report to NNETESOL – November 2007The DOE-sponsored
two-day WIDA ELL Data Retreat (September 6 and 7 in Burlington) was excellent. School teams comprised of administrators, ESL
teachers and content teachers examined ELL achievement data, as compared to other student groups in their schools. If an achievement
gap was found, strategies were used to examine hypotheses about the school-based causes of the gaps and to create Action Plans
to address the causes. The spring 2007 WIDA-CAL pilot of the CLIMBS course (Content and Language Integration
as a Means to Bridging Success) is being revised for a VT ‘rollout’ beginning in January. Saint Michael’s
College will partner with WIDA and CAL to offer this course, and the NPD-grant program VCLA will underwrite a portion of its
cost to make it affordable for VT’s teachers. The course will meet one full day/month for five months, with online work
between class days. A few new hot topics being raised are the following: 1) What is the
effect of the ‘creative spelling’ approach on ELL students? Does it make learning more difficult since many rely
on their accented speech for it? Does it then lead to fossilization of ‘bad habits’? What are other people’s
experiences with this? 2) What are other people’s experiences and thoughts on cumulative
cognitive deficit (CCD)? With more and more older international adoptees coming into our schools, should we be more informed
about this? VT Report to NNETESOL – September 5, 2007Many districts are busy preparing for the DOE-sponsored two-day ELL Data Retreat on September 6 and 7 in Burlington. Schools
have been invited to form Leadership Teams, composed of both administrators and teachers, to begin the process of working
as PLCs (professional learning communities) to analyze their data and work toward improving ELL achievement. The data retreat
will be led by Judy Sargent and Jesse Markow from WIDA. Participants will analyze their school’s or district’s
NECAP and NSRE data, their individual student NECAP and NSRE reports, their ACCESS data, as well as ESL Program and enrollment
data. During the spring of 2007, six VT teachers were funded by the OELA grant at Saint Michael’s College
to participate in the pilot of the CLIMBS project, a professional development course for teachers of ELLs. The CLIMBS project,
a joint effort by WIDA and the Center for Applied Linguistics, is a modification of the SIOP model. The VT teachers served
as participant-observers over the course of several months, trying out learning modules and offering feedback. At the
end of the pilot, a conference call brought all participants and several others together to discuss the project and how it
might be adapted to a VT context. Unfortunately, the project did not get funded by OELA, and VT Title II Director Jim McCobb
is working to find a way to make a similar project available to VT teachers. SIOP courses have begun in the
Hartford School District and in the Chittenden South School District this year. These courses are once again funded wholly
or in part by the Vermont Consortium for Language and Academics. Saint Michael’s College has received
a second five-year NPD grant from OELA. This new grant project will focus on curriculum reform in teacher education programs,
with the goal that all pre-service teacher candidates will graduate well-prepared to teach ELLs. As part of this work, SMC
faculty form both the Department of Applied Linguistics (MATESL and ESL Licensure programs) and the Education Department will
be joined by representatives from partner LEAs to form a professional learning community that will collaborate in the process
of SMC curriculum reform. The new curriculum will be made available to all interested schools via a grant website. The following 4 topics continue to be heavily discussed at networking meetings and other exchanges of ELL people: 1)
What does it mean to adequately serve our students translated into time definitions and accommodations, if that is even possible? 2) What are the various practices and processes for exiting and monitoring students that districts are using? 3) What
exactly are the laws regarding ELL and what are our obligations to these laws? 4) How can we best educate the various
district administrative teams (ie superintendents and principals) on the needs of ELL students? The next step after answering
these questions for ELL educators is getting the information out to the people who need it. Can we, NNETESOL as an organization,
comment on these or should we leave it all up to our state directors? Can we collaborate with our state directors as an organization?
Can these topics be included at our next conference? Can NNETESOL provide a packet of information/talking points/bulleted
lists on ELL which the various representatives can distribute to districts? Can NNETESOL leverage any pressure on districts
to adequately serve their ELL students? Would administrators be more apt to listen to us than to teachers? Is this a role
of NNETESOL?
April 2007 VT Report to NNETESOL
Statewide Issues and Events
ELLs apparently classified by DOE as “special needs” students. This disturbing
information came about when one of the professors at Saint Michael’s College went to a ROPA meeting to hear updates
on portfolio requirements for pre-service teachers, and was told that ELLs have been place into this category (previously
named and still associated with Special Education.) Apparently, this change was made without discussion with ESOL professionals,
and was unknown even to VT’s Title III Director, Jim McCobb. SMC faculty will work with Jim McCobb to investigate the
history, rationale and implications of this change.
ESL has been designated a Teacher Shortage area for VT.
VT has just completed its third year of ACCESS testing.
ELL-SPED Initiative Continues. Charged
with drafting ELL-SPED guidelines for the VT DOE, this group (which was formed last spring) continues to meet. Members have
made a comprehensive review of policies manuals from other states, and have now broken into groups to begin drafting chapters
for the new guidelines. The group is comprised of ESL teachers, Special Educators and administrators, members of the VT Department
of Education, and ESOL and Special Ed faculty from Saint Michael’s College. The work is co-facilitated by Lucy Ely Pagan
of the Northeast Regional Resource Center and Maria Wilson-Portuondo of the Education Alliance at Brown University (our keynote
speaker at the spring conference).
Vermont Council of Teachers of Math—At the VCTM spring conference,
titled “Teaching Math to ALL Learners”, 3 out of 8 workshops either focused directly on or included a great deal
of information about teaching math to students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. VCTM Board Member Dr.
Timothy Whiteford (presenter at last fall’s NNETESOL conference) has been instrumental in keeping issues of diversity
‘up front and center’ for the state’s math teachers.
Vermont Teacher Diversity Scholarship
Program – the upcoming May conference for VT educators will include several workshops focused on cultural and linguistic
diversity. [Don't Hate… Appreciate: A Study of Tolerance and Acceptance from the Winooski School District,
which is now 18% ELL; Classroom Success for English Language Learners by NNETESOL Board member Rita MacDonald; Recognizing
and Responding to Trauma in the Refugee Immigrant Community, by Sherry Burnette, Ph.D., AHS Trauma Coordinator and Denise
Lamoureux, State Refugee Coordinator; and Cultural Beliefs’ Impact on Learning & Teaching by Sherwood
Smith, Director, Center for Cultural Pluralism, UVM]
Vermont Adult Learning has received training in Sheltered
Instruction for ESOL Students. VAL teacher Beth Hartman and colleague Sue Roediger, both currently studying in the OELA grant-funded
program (VCLA) at Saint Michael’s College, provided staff development for the large group of VAL teachers working with
the state’s growing number of ESOL parents and pre-K children in either the Adult Learning Program or the Family Literacy
Program.
VT teachers observe pilot program in Rhode Island—through a joint effort on the part of VT’s
Title III and the VT Consortium for Language and Academics, ten VT teachers will be funded as participant-observers in the
Rhode Island pilot of the CLIMBS project, a training series for classroom teachers that integrates WIDA standards into the
SIOP method of teaching sheltered instruction. The CLIMBS pilot, if successful, will be the model for training adopted by
the WIDA Consortium. VT’s participant-observers will meet later in the year to discuss their impressions of the training
and to plan for its adoption in VT.
VT’s Bilingual-Bicultural School Liaisons Receive Training—In
2006, 15 bilingual-bicultural school liaisons and their coordinators (some who are also ELL teachers/coordinators),
the State Refugee Coordinator and the State ELL coordinator met for a day-long training focused on their work within the school
districts. The training was so successful that two sessions are being planned for this year. From Refugee Coordinator
Denise Lamoureux, “ I think that what make these training unique is that it is tailored to the liaison’s work
and needs and that it is the only time where liaisons from different school districts get to be together and share their common
experience working with refugee children. It gives them a sense of belonging to a unique professional group and discuss
their specificity. I also believe that the fact that the training is sponsored by the State Refugee Coordinator and
the Dept of Education ELL coordinator make it easier to foster an inter-district collaboration to design and deliver this
training.”
Professional Development --Training efforts in VT have been focused primarily on content
teachers, and on the collaboration between ESL and content teachers, as evidenced by the following:
VT rep
Rebecca Wurdak coordinated a successful series of ELL trainings in the Northeast Kingdom, drawing participants from up to
two hours away for workshops on mainstream classroom strategies for ELLs and analyzing possible LD in ELLs. Rebecca has been
invited to develop several strands of staff development in her district for the upcoming year, which will integrate ESOL information
into staff development for the Literacy, Science and Math teams.
Two-day WIDA Training—Last November,
school teams met for a 2-day training on using WIDA standards in mainstream classrooms. WIDA trainers Mariana Castro
and Lenore Carnuccio gave content teachers an overview of the standards and how to integrate them into lesson plans for ELLs.
6 SIOP Courses Held around State—VCLA (OELA grant program at Saint Michael’s College) is funding
six 11-session courses in SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) around the state. The six free courses focused
on training content teachers in the 8 competencies needed for successful teaching of ELLs in mainstream classes. The course
have been well-attended by teachers and admistrators. VCLA facilitators co-teach with local ESL teachers, to develop sustainability
within the districts and to provide the ESL teachers with experience in staff development, while also increasing their
visibility within their districts.
Mary Kay O’Brien and Mark Nigolian (ESL Content Specialists from
the Burlington School District) are currently teaching a course for K-12 teachers through UVM and Saint Joseph’s College
in Rutland. The course (Teaching Content to English Language Learners) is a hybrid course with 1/2 online sessions and
1/2 face-to-face sessions, and is an outgrowth of their successful QUEST grant.
News from VT’s IHEs
SIT—No news, although I’m sure that’s due to the fact that I requested it so late.
Saint
Michael’s College
Vermont Consortium for Language and Academics--The first 9 teachers are now completing their
two-year license endorsement program, funded by OELA through the VT Consortium for Language and Academics. In addition to
the coursework, these candidates did significant additional work in either their communities or school districts to provide
enhanced opportunities for ESOL families and students. This work included projects such as the afore-mentioned VAL training
in SIOP (Sheltered Instruction) for VAL’s teachers; the creation of a school-based “ESL + Orientation to Our School
Community” class for parents of new ESL students; a three-session series of ESL workshops for district Literacy Leaders,
and CultureBeat, a multicultural festival in the Northeast Kingdom. The final grant-funded group of 11 teachers will soon
begin their two-year program, and will soon be busily engaged in similar work.
John Halliwell, NNETESOL President-Elect,
Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics, was invited as a plenary speaker to the 28th Annual TESOL Greece International
Conference, March 9-11, as well as to give several workshops with teachers and teacher-trainers. His talk, entitled
‘Process Grammar: Input, Output & Interaction,’ discussed current research in the acquisition of second
language grammar and how these findings point to a process approach to teaching as a way to engage and empower students in
learning and using grammar.
Math and Diversity - Professor Timothy Whiteford (NNETESOL Presenter
last fall, creator of Math and Diversity website) received a Faculty Development Grant to create a course for pre-service
teachers on teaching math to culturally and linguistically diverse students. He chaired an April meeting of interested math
educators, special educators and ESOL professionals from around the state to develop a list of issues, solutions and resources,
and is inviting interested parties to participate in the teaching of this course in SMC’s Education Department.
MATESL and Ed. Dept write joint grant proposal--The MATESL department and Education department have collaborated in an OELA
grant proposal to jointly revise curricula so that all pre-service teachers at Saint Michael’s College will be trained
in ESOL theory and methodology, better preparing them for the realities of today’s classrooms. They will find out later
this spring if the proposal has been funded, but are already beginning to integrate ESOL materials and readings into the undergraduate
teacher education program.
Vermont Teachers at Seattle TESOL
Mary Kay O’Brien and Linda Walsleban
(ESL Content Specialists from the Burlington School District) presented "Creating the Best Professional Development
for Educators”. They used embedded video of students at different WIDA ELP levels to help participants see the difference
and discuss ways to differentiate instruction to reach those levels. In addition, they used other multi media to help
ESL teachers prepare to train teachers in their own districts to work with ELLs.
Saint Michael’s Professor
Dr. Elizabeth O’Dowd and Burlington School District’s Mark Nigolian co-presented "I's to C" Academic
Language”, a professional development model, emerging from Burlington School District's recent QUEST program, designed
to help content teachers teach the academic language of their content area to ELLs.
Saint Michael’s
Professor and President-Elect Dr. John Halliwell, along with SMC professors Dr. Elizabeth O’Dowd and Dr. Mahmoud Arani,
presented “Participatory Grammar Instruction.” They described an approach to teaching grammar discovery in which
learners collectively construct knowledge of grammar, negotiate meaning and notice gaps in their inter-language in the context
created by their own output.
Saint Michael’s Professor Christine Bauer-Ramazani gave an invited presentation,
“Technology and Speech: The Effectiveness of Computer Technology in Teaching Speaking and Pronunciation Skills.”
Professor Bauer-Ramazani also gave a demonstration of a six-week online workshop on Teaching with PowerPoint.”
School for International Training’s Jon Nordmeyer presented “Wading into the Mainstream” which proposed
that effective collaboration between ESL and mainstream teachers depends on ESL teachers coming to understand the experiences
of their non-ESL colleagues. The presentation explored the critical intersection of language and content from the perspective
of mainstream teachers.
NNETESOL-Related News
Thanks to Rosemary Orlando, VT’s Board now has the
membership lists for VT. When able, they will use the list to produce an e-mail distribution list, allowing easy and fast
access to all VT NNETESOL members for polling of opinions, dissemination of info, calls for action, etc.
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