UW GRANT TO PROVIDE ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE ENDORSEMENT

Jan. 31, 2005 -- The University of Wyoming College of Education has received a $180,000 grant to increase the number of certified English as a Second Language (ESL) instructors. The grant's author says it will help meet the instructional language needs of a rising number of language minority students in Wyoming public schools.

Under the grant proposal to the State Department of Education, the College of Education will develop course work for 90 educators who now hold Wyoming teaching certificates and are interested in an ESL endorsement. Applications from public school teachers are now being accepted for the program that begins this spring. The grant money will be administered by UW Outreach School, which also will schedule the ESL endorsement classes.

The grant proposal resolves the "critical" need to provide qualified teachers to meet the needs of Wyoming's language minority students. The most recent data from the Wyoming Department of Education show a student population of 3,378 English Language Learners (ELL) and only 10 fully-credentialed teachers. Just seven years ago, there were 1,778 ELLs. The increase has occurred while Wyoming's overall school population has declined by 13 percent.

"The increasing numbers of students in Wyoming categorized as limited English proficient are experiencing academic problems that are exacerbated by the lack of highly-qualified educators to meet the needs of these special students," says Francisco Rios, head of the UW Educational Studies Department, who wrote the grant. Rios currently is serving a Fulbright Scholar assignment in Chile. "The lack of highly-qualified and endorsed teachers specializing in the area of second language acquisition is an obvious contributor to the academic struggles faced by these students. The grant addresses this need by providing an infrastructure that will significantly expand the number of highly-qualified educators and that we hope will become self-sustaining upon completion of federal grant funding."

UW, with support from the Wyoming Department of Education and local districts, collaborated to create a research-based professional development program to provide qualified teachers to meet the state's program standards, Rios says.

"The aim of the grant is to reach every school district in the state, with the opportunity to have ESL-endorsed teachers on their staffs," says Sandra Moore, a UW graduate assistant working as the ESL grant program assistant while Rios completes his Fulbright Scholar assignment. Moore coordinates the effort to start the grant process and to distribute the grant funds.

The project consists of two phases: phase one focuses on professional development and phase two will be follow-up and implementation of "best practices" related to teaching second language learners.

The first stage will consist of five educational institutes. The first three will provide 45 instructional hours with teachers while the final two will consist of 30 hours training with educators. Collectively, they will deliver coursework that prepares 90 teachers to work with second language learners

Qualified UW faculty and selected instructors will deliver the courses. This phase will take approximately 18 months, Rios says, and each institute will be offered at three different regional locations in Wyoming to accommodate the demographics of the state.

Following the initial coursework, phase II will include follow-up in the form of professional assistance to those teachers completing all institute work in the first phase, Rios says. This will allow for assistance and evaluation of the participants' ability to work with English language learners. This part of the program will be six months.

"As the number of language minority students increases across the state, the need for qualified and certified educators has become critical," Rios adds. "Approximately 10 Wyoming educators hold valid ESL endorsements creating an astounding teacher-pupil ratio of one to 378."

He says academic difficulties experienced by this student population are collected from Wyoming's English language reading comprehension exam data.
For more information, call (307) 766-3130 or visit the Web site at http://ed.uwyo.edu/endorse_cert/esl/

UW GRANT TO PROVIDE ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE ENDORSEMENT

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