Model Component: Instruction

Support in planning and implementing school-wide efforts to address needs of ELs and families

We aim to improve teacher quality through a professional development program that will result in state certification (e.g. Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Program Specialist: ESL Certificate) or other credentialing.

The teacher professional development component of our project focuses on equipping teachers in grades 6-12 with the skills, strategies, and knowledge essential to supporting the ELs in their mainstream classrooms, particularly with regard to literacy instruction in their content areas. Currently this program results in teachers earning the “The Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Program Specialist: ESL Certificate.”

To achieve overall project goals, the teacher professional development program coincides with the leadership and parent components and features the following: 

  • Four graduate-level courses leading to the Program Specialist: ESL Certificate
  • On-site teacher coaching to support implementation of newly-learned strategies

The program offered to mainstream, content teachers is aligned with a central, longstanding ideology in Temple’s ESL Certificate Program. Since its inception in 2004, the Temple ESL Certificate Program has featured the mission of providing essential training for ALL teachers. That is, the Program forwards the notion that the ESL Certificate should not be considered as a credential only for aspiring ESL teachers; rather, it is an increasingly important credential for ANY teacher who endeavors to better address the needs of the ELs in their mainstream, heterogeneous classroom.

In conjunction with four graduate-level courses, teachers in the program receive instructional coaching on an ongoing basis over a two-year period. With best practices for EL teaching and learning gleaned from the coursework as the foundation of the discussion, the coach meets with teachers individually to examine how these language and literacy strategies can be integrated into their teaching.

For more information on Temple University’s PA ESL Certificate
Program, click here.