A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Model Strategies in Bilingual Education: Professional Development - 1995

Project Interact

Southeast Missouri State University
Cape Girardeau, Missouri

Goals and Context

Integrating Educational Resources for Access to Children and Teachers--Project INTERACT--is designed to provide English as a Second Language (ESL) training and certification to public school teachers, aides, and other educators who work in districts with significant numbers of language minority students. Because of the great diversity among language minority students and the difficulty of offering programs in each primary language, many districts choose ESL programs that can serve multilingual classes. However, they lack the trained staff to implement effective ESL instruction and look to Project INTERACT to fill the gap.

A number of factors in Missouri have converged to provide fertile ground for Project INTERACT. First, an increasing number of schools in the state are enrolling students with limited English proficiency (LEP) who need special instructional support to achieve regular curricular goals. In 1992, the official count of identified LEP children in Missouri schools was more than 3,000; the majority are Vietnamese and Hispanic, but more than 60 languages are represented, which presents a special challenge for program designers. This count probably does not include a substantial number of the LEP migrant students who attend school in Missouri only in the spring and fall. Second, the state Board of Education and the recently adopted Missouri School Improvement Program require every school district to identify and provide appropriate assistance to its language minority students.

Strapped for funds and qualified teachers, many districts found ways to avoid identifying students as limited English proficient and therefore as eligible for special services. Instead, they used more convenient labels, such as "language delayed" or "language disordered." A survey of districts showed they provided a variety of types of assistance to language minority children, but much of it was based on existing programs, such as speech pathology, special education, and Title I, which were not designed to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse children. With the influx of greater numbers of LEP students, the issue became harder to ignore or circumvent.

Training teachers, aides, and other staff in the use of native language and/or special ESL methods that promote student success is central to meeting state mandates. In the spring of 1990, the Missouri Board of Education approved certification requirements in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Southeast Missouri State University (known locally as SEMO) is one of only three universities in the state that offer TESOL courses. The university had been offering TESOL workshops for credit in the St. Louis area for 10 years and summer TESOL courses for seven years, but in response to new mandates, demographic shifts, and necessary impending changes at the district level, SEMO experienced a dramatic upswing in requests for ESL training by teachers and administrators from all over the state. This increase created an awareness of the acute need for ESL training, especially in isolated rural communities.

Project INTERACT is designed to meet this need. In consultation with other educators, the current project director decided that the most productive first step would be to develop a cadre of trained ESL professionals whose expertise could serve as a resource to colleagues as well as students in their region. Thus, Project INTERACT prepares teachers and other educators to help students learn English in a variety of school settings--regular classrooms, pullout sessions, and afterschool tutorials and to become lead teachers in their schools.

Project Description

Participants and selection. All participants are certified teachers, assistant teachers, or aides. (Assistant teachers have more extensive responsibilities than do aides.) A project advisory committee, composed of knowledgeable teachers and administrators working in districts with established records of commitment to serving LEP students effectively, select the participants. Four priorities guide their decisions. First, candidates must be teaching in communities with concentrations of identified LEP students. Second, they must speak a second language and/or have experience working with people from other cultures. Third, they must commit to completing the seven-course, 21-credit program within a prescribed timeframe. And fourth, each must have a letter of recommendation from a supervisor, indicating support for training and willingness to use the candidate's expertise after program completion. In addition, candidates who have already begun certification programs in TESOL receive preference, to facilitate their work and provide districts with qualified personnel at the earliest time possible.

In the first year of the grant (1992-1993), 10 of the 79 participants were language minorities, and 57 had some experience with second languages and/or working with other cultures. The director took advantage of her extensive, statewide network of contacts in ESL and Migrant Education to ensure broad dissemination of information about the project and to identify and recruit the best candidates. The same network kept her informed about the distribution of LEP students who need help--which seems to be a larger population than those who are formally identified as LEP. As a result, the applicant pool includes teachers from rural schools with small, essentially uncounted groups of LEP migrant students as well as those from urban centers with large, visible language minority populations.

Coursework and activities. Courses are scheduled outside of regular teaching hours--in the evenings, on Saturdays, and during the summer. Classes meet at locations that are central for the participants in each region and, usually, at times that are convenient for all concerned. For example, participants clustered in the St. Louis area requested a weekend model--a few hours on Friday afternoon or evening followed by a longer session on Saturday, or weekends spaced over several weeks. Course instructors try to arrange the schedule with requests like this in mind in order to expedite progress.

Project INTERACT offers all the courses required for TESOL certification: Introduction to Linguistics, Theories of Second Language Learning, Methods and Techniques of TESOL, Materials Development and Assessment of TESOL, Teaching in a Multicultural Society, and a practicum. Participants also take a three-credit elective. The semester-long practicum experience includes on-site coaching by an expert instructor. Qualified adjunct professors offer courses at several locations in sequences that take into account the needs of local groups. For example, a participant group in the southeast may be starting the program and need the introductory course, while another group in the St. Louis area is ready for the practicum. Course requirements include developing an integrated philosophy of ESL teaching that reflects consideration of theory, research, and personal experience; several units that use content-based language lessons and cooperative learning activities; critiques of ESL materials; and adaptation of regular curriculum materials for ESL students. Course syllabi show a balance between study of the theories and principles of language acquisition and related pedagogical issues, on one hand; and strategies such as cooperative learning, lesson plans, tests, curriculum materials, on the other. Each participant develops a professional portfolio during the program, adding materials created for courses to produce a profile of new competencies. The portfolio includes participant-written materials such as reflective essays and lesson plans, assessment tools, videotapes of teaching and peer critiques; and evaluative feedback from both school and project supervisors.

Location. The three main areas of concentration for courses are in St. Louis and the northwest and southwest quadrants of the state, which have the largest numbers of identified LEP students, but courses are also offered in the southeast, where LEP migrant students present seasonal challenges, and in the central region, where a military installation, a university, and a migrant workforce all contribute to language diversity. Project INTERACT's director has appointed site coordinators for each area to help her find suitable project participants, qualified instructors for the required courses, and classroom space. Effective networking keeps this far-flung collection of program activities well coordinated, but when communities of learners reach a critical mass, they are supported in their efforts to assume more autonomous responsibility.

Funding. Project INTERACT is funded by a generous Title VII Education Personnel Training Grant for the period 1992-1995. Inexperience in grant-writing and developing programs to meet this kind of challenge and difficulty in obtaining accurate demographic data resulted in several unsuccessful early proposals. However, the project director's persistence in applying finally gained appropriate attention to both the problem and her proposed solution. Title VII funds pay for all project costs; participants earn graduate credit for their work and an ESOL endorsement on their teaching certificate. Most indicate that without project support, they would have been unable to participate.

Project Outcomes

Project INTERACT was funded in July 1992 and visited in May 1993, so the project had yet to accumulate the anticipated evidence of success. However, it has an extensive evaluation plan. Among the factors to be monitored are: the number of participants who actually receive their ESOL endorsement, the quality of the curriculum and materials developed (the Project INTERACT director hopes to create a "repository of resources"), the performance of targeted LEP students on the state standardized test, and the amount of contact that Project INTERACT participants have with other teachers and staff who could benefit from their knowledge of how to educate their LEP students effectively. SEMO has made an institutional commitment to support the project, developing formal and informal procedures to integrate project activities into the fabric of university affairs.

Lessons from Experience

After less than a year of existence, Project INTERACT leaders are already concerned about ensuring the quality and integrity of a program that covers such a broad geographical area. For instance, peer coaching networks include teachers in schools that are miles apart. The practicum supervision model is an effective one, but it is time- and labor-intensive. Project INTERACT participants may know something about many ESOL strategies (such as cooperative learning and content-based instruction), but they may not have sufficient time and energy to focus on any one of them, given the dispersion of the LEP student population. The Project INTERACT director has spent a great deal of time planning and arranging the various courses taught by university faculty in different parts of the state and ensuring that course content and participants meet her high standards. Careful groundwork at the beginning could increase the likelihood that Project INTERACT designers and participants will be able to overcome the many challenges they face in what is often a less than welcome environment for advocates of language minority students.

Confronted with local and state stereotypes, an unusually high proportion of Project INTERACT applicants are Title I teachers, certified in reading or speech pathology, responding to an upswing in the number of clients referred for "speech" or "reading" problems that in fact were due to lack of English proficiency. Unfamiliarity with the nature of the challenges posed to language minority students by an English-only environment had prompted some districts to apply remedial or special education solutions inappropriately--a problem most effectively addressed, in the view of Project INTERACT developers, by improving the skills and knowledge of the teaching workforce.
-###-

[Project Adelante] [Table of Contents] [Chapter 4 Challenges in Design and Implementation]