COELEC Presentation 2014

Welcome to the Central Ohio English Learners’ Education Collaborative presentation.

COELEC is a NPD grant from the U.S. Dept of Education. This is a 5 year grant, and we are in year 3. COELEC has three initiatives: a higher education project, a summer academy project, and a career ladder project. Before I focus on the topic for this session, I will take a minute to introduce you to each of the initiatives. I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the work of Kristin Reninger. Kristin is the Director of Graduate Studies at Otterbein, so she’s pretty busy with that job. In addition to that, she is the faculty coordinator for COELEC. It’s Kristin’s job to come up with the ideas that will attract faculty and teachers to the project.

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In the HEI, the focus is to introduce Otterbein education faculty to TESOL strategies, identify ways to embed them into instruction, and develop projects and resources that reflect TESOL instruction. In this way our all education majors will have exposure to strategies that support ELs. Dr. Kristin Reninger typically kicks off the annual HEI with an invitation to the Ohio TESOL Conference. Participating faculty engage in a series of brown bag meetings through the academic year. The meetings are an opportunity for faculty to learn about ELs, TESOL strategies, and to collaborate on projects.

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Here are some of our faculty during a conversation with career ladder students. Faculty typically have not had TESOL training and at Otterbein there is little opportunity to interact with colleagues or students from other cultures. We try to provide those opportunities for faculty. In addition to collaboration time, faculty receive a stipend for their participation.

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Our Career Ladder initiative is an opportunity for adult immigrants who are second language speakers to earn a teaching license. This year, in May, we had our first completers. Here you see Fabiola Milla Kimble, from Peru, receive an award for outstanding multicultural efforts.

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Although Fabiola came to us with a law degree from Peru, in order to acquire an Ohio teaching license, she took a number of post‐bac courses, including the Senior Year Experience during her student teaching. She and Luis Perez, also shown, are the first COELEC completers, acquiring teaching licenses in Spanish Language Education. Luis came to Otterbein from Spain, and brought a Ph.D. from his home country.

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Other career ladder students, shown here, were honored for their exemplary work on campus. Mariyama Diallo originally comes from Ghana, but was raised in France. She is earning her early childhood license. Also honored was Naima Ali, a Somali immigrant, who is earning her middle school license in science and math.

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Mariyama was also inducted into the Education Department in the spring. We have 6 more career ladder students who are joining the Education Dept. this year. Once they reach this stage, typically only methods and student teaching remains.

Also pictured is Rowda Moallin, a career ladder student in early childhood as well. She served as a group facilitator during a diversity summit on campus. Here Rowda is discussing an issue with a faculty member at the summit.

The grant pays for all tuition and course related expenses for career ladder students. We have 8 post‐bac students, 2 undergrads at Otterbein and 6 associate degree students working at Columbus State.

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The third initiative is the Summer Academy, and this is the focus of our presentation today.

The HE initiative is a model for exposing all education majors to strategies that support the academic achievement for ELs. However, it remains a model, and best case, we reach all education majors in the classes of those faculty who are participating in the grant in any given year. As a model, we are still not reaching every education major in all their classes, and Otterbein is not alone in this shortcoming. This is an advocacy issue that Ohio TESOL continues to address because there are too many education majors who are receiving a license but have had no training in TESOL. They are unprepared to work with ELs. At the same time, teachers in our classroom now, by and large, also lack any training in TESOL. This will have to change. It’s unrealistic to place the burden for training new graduates and inservice teachers to work with ELs on the back of school districts. The summer academy is a is model that works. Data from our outside evaluation continues to reveal statistically significant in the training provided and carry over into the classroom.

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The quotes on the screen are just a few from participants. You can read the full evaluation, including all the quotes from our interviews with participants in our evaluation at www.otterbein.edu/coelec. The idea of the summer academy is to train inservice and preservice teachers to support ELs. Courses have been revised from our TESOL endorsement program to fit a condensed timeframe and to address instruction in middle and high school content classes. Each summer two classes are offered that alternate every other year. One summer we offer instruction and assessment. The next summer we offer literacy and cultures. Classes are organized over 5 weeks. The first two weeks are traditional classes that meet every afternoon for about 3 hours, M‐Th. This is when teachers learn the basics of TESOL instruction. At the beginning of the third week, we switch from afternoons to an 8 a.m.‐1 p.m. schedule. Teachers start each day, M‐Th, with class, then about 9:45, we transport middle school ELs to campus to work in small groups with teachers. The work is not remedial for ELs, but an advance look at a concept that students will visit in the fall. Small instructional groups meet for about an hour daily, then everyone moves to the campus dining hall for lunch. This is an opportunity for ELs to visit a college campus and for teachers to interact informally with students from different cultures. After lunch, Els board the bus and head home while teachers regroup from a debrief and more instruction and planning for the next day.

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Of course the four courses that are offered, at no charge to participants or ELs, do not complete the requirements for the TESOL endorsement, but this is not a TESOL endorsement initiative. The goal is, simply, to help inservice teachers (20) and preservice teachers (10) learn and practice the strategies that support ELs academically. If teachers wish to complete the requirements for the endorsement, there are two additional courses they must take that are not part of the grant. However, when teachers complete either or both summer academy sessions, at the very least, they will have the strategies to support ELs. This past summer, we offered the literacy in content and cultures. Instruction was project‐ based, as introduced by our math chair Dr. Jeff Smith. Using Jeff’s model, teachers were asked to identify a project in their content area and to develop lesson plans based on that project.

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Before I ask our guests to share their experiences, these are pictures of the teacher‐student interaction at lunch…

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Working in the library

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Some groups worked outdoors

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The interaction between student and teachers was ongoing, helping Els develop a relationship with a teacher and helping teachers learn about different cultures.

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This is one project, and the topic is proportional reasoning. The teacher who planned to be here today has been battling an illness for sometime. Recently she had a setback, so she is unable to join us today. Nonetheless, you can see some of their work in these photos.

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These photos help us see the language and the strategies teachers used to help ELs understand math. Students were surrounded by math vocabulary and there was support to use academic language every day.

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More instructional notes and examples. We have a list of tools to measure. We have standard and non‐standard units of measures. And we see examples of numbers that are proportional and some that are not. A lot of support for ELs is low tech. In that way, it can stay around for ELs to see all day everyday

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At this time, I am pleased to introduce our guests. These are teachers, inservice and preservice, who were in the summer academy. The inservice teachers were also in the 2013 academy, and in fact, have complete all the requirements for the TESOL endorsement.

Dr. Ben Hartnell is a social studies teacher at Westerville North H.S.

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The next guest is Katie Wirthlin. Katie is an art teacher in Westerville.

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And finally, Naima is a career ladder student. She came to us as a post bac from OSU with a degree in psychology.

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We needed to ensure EL attendance, so we had weekly drawings to gift cards and Ipods.

This seemed to keep the students coming regularly

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For the last two summers we have concluded the experience with a picnic, attended by parents. This year we added an open house for parents mid way through the student experience.

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A tradition that has been established is a clap out after the picnic to send the students on their way.

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This is a photo of all our 2014 summer participants.

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And a photo of the teachers who completed the course requirements for the TESOL endorsement.

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