TEAM UP: Teaching English Language Learners Action Model to Unite Professionals

The growth of the number of English Language Learners in our national K-12 schools has skyrocketed in the past decade.  The National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement for Limited English Proficient Students reported in 2002 that during the period between 1989 and 2000 the national growth rate was 105% for K-12 English Language Learners (ELLs) enrolled in public schools. Forty percent of teachers nationwide have English Language Learners in their classes. Changing demography in urban, rural, and suburban communities has practicing elementary and secondary teachers asking one recurring question: "How do we meet the needs of students for whom English is a second language, and who are expected to learn academic content and develop language skill at the same time?"

To address these concerns, CARLA is participating in a 5-year, $1.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Title III National Professional Development Program in partnership with the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota. TEAM UP: Teaching English Language Learners Action Model to Unite Professionals, led by Professor Constance Walker, will help Minnesota educators improve classroom instruction for their limited English proficient students through a field-based and team-centered model of professional development.

Professional development plays a key role in providing teachers with the skills they need to work with ELLs. Teachers consistently indicate their tremendous need for information, feedback, and opportunities for discussion that these learners present. And while they want to know what instructional strategies and techniques will benefit these students, they also want and need to know more about working with children who live in poverty, who may not have literacy skills in their first language, who may also be struggling with a learning disability.  Clearly the pressing needs of second language learners at school will require more than 2-hour drop-in presentations, more than an all-day workshop, more than a week-long inservice during the summer. Traditional inservice structures, which often focus on curricular innovations or state requirements, do not provide opportunities to explore such questions.

Given that improving the ability of ELLs to succeed in school requires much more than a "quick fix," TEAM UP grant activities will be built around a two-year professional development program in Minnesota that is school-site based and involves all the key members of the educational community (classroom paraprofessionals, bilingual assistants, ESL, mainstream teachers) as well as preservice teachers. In addition to the core professional development activities of the TEAM UP project, the grant will create curriculum for the professional education of paraprofessionals and other educators working with ELL students and will be widely disseminated through the CARLA website and a series of workshops for teachers conducted around the state of Minnesota.

Over the course of the two-year span of their involvement, the participating educators will address the following questions in their school-site teams and in role-based groups:

1. What can I do personally to prepare myself to best meet the needs of English language learners in my classroom? indicating personal professional growth planning that meets professional standards;
2. As a member of a team of educators from my school, what are the primary issues that we need to tackle such that our instruction in the classroom can best meet the needs of ELL students? indicating team development of plans, action, and collaborative work to achieve goals);
3. What is involved in my role (as a paraprofessional, mainstream teacher, ESL teacher, preservice teacher)  within this school in serving the needs of all learners?;
4. How do we collectively address the development of a healthy school community that focuses on learning and optimizes individual and collective skill? indicating collaboratively-developed plans for sustainable school-site partnership.

The TEAM UP professional development model allows for intensive learning and exchange of ideas about issues related to second language learners across the professional roles. The model also promotes sustained, in-depth discussion across these roles within individual schools. Thus, the professional development "input" will be relevant for all participants and each school-site team will have up to six team members who are intimately acquainted with the specific challenges faced by the school and are highly motivated to work together to find solutions to these challenges.

This grant grows out of previous collaboration with the Minneapolis Public Schools on a grant entitled Creating a Model for Mainstream Elementary Teachers with High Numbers of English Language Learners (ELLs).