Academic Support for English Language Learners

MontTELLs- U.S. Department of Education, Office of English Language Acquisition, National Professional Development Program

U.S. Department of Education, Office of English Language Acquisition, National Professional Development Program
On September 19, 2016 we were notified that the Center for Bilingual and Multicultural Education was awarded $2.7 million to recruit and educate 60-90 middle and high school teachers from schools across Montana with significant proportions of American Indians and others identified as Limited English Proficient students (LEPs) in hopes of raising the academic achievement of these students. The MontTELLs grant project seeks to provide professional development and mentoring to the participants in each of two interventions. In order to determine the most effective way to support teachers of LEPs, schools will be randomly assigned to one of two programs and all participants in that school will receive the intervention randomly selected for that school. Using this cluster-randomized clinical trial design we hope to be able to provide causal evidence regarding the efficacy of the interventions. One intervention will consist of an intensive five-week online course addressing language acquisition theories and instructional strategies for teaching LEPs followed by mentoring. The second intervention will consist of 12 credits of graduate study coursework towards a Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education Certificate spread over two summers with mentoring sandwiched in between during the academic year. Over the five years of the grant, we will recruit participants from the secondary schools of our consortium member school districts to participate in one of three cohorts. Each cohort will consist of 20-30 participants of which about half will come from schools randomly selected for one of the two intervention groups.

For more information please contact Dr. Jioanna Carjuzaa at 406.994.4941 or [email protected]