MontTELLs is no longer Recruiting 

 CBME logo                    MTTELLS

***Calling all middle school and high school classroom teachers across Montana who work with Limited English Proficient (LEP) students***

 

If you teach a core curricular area in 6th-12th grades and want to gain the necessary knowledge and skills to support your students’ academic achievement by building their academic literacy skills, be sure to secure your spot in the MontTELLs (Montana Teachers of English Language Learners) grant project.

In September 2016 the Center for Bilingual and Multicultural Education (CBME) at Montana State University (MSU) was awarded $2.7 million from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA), National Professional Development Program to recruit and educate 60-90 middle school and high school teachers from across the state with significant proportions of American Indians and others identified as 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 programs.

Teachers in participating schools will be randomly assigned to one of the two programs, and all participants in that school will receive the program randomly selected for that school.  The first cohort started in the spring of 2016.  Over the course of the five years of the grant, the CBME will recruit participants to participate in two more project cohorts each consisting of 30-40 participants. Course costs and fees are covered by the grant and stipends will be provided to participants to compensate for their time and effort.

In Montana, the majority of our LEPs are American Indian.  In fact, according to the American Indian Student Achievement Data Report for fall 2016 released by the Montana Office of Public Instruction, during the 2015–2016 school year there were 3,189 LEP students enrolled in Montana, and 73.1 percent of all LEP students were identified as American Indian.  This important grant project will address these students’ needs and narrow the achievement gap.

For more information please contact Dr. Jioanna Carjuzaa, Executive Director of the Center for Bilingual and Multicultural Education at 406-994-4941 or [email protected]