Initiatives

English Language Acquisition:  National Professional Development Grant awarded to the Bilingual/ESL Endorsement Professional Development Program 2007-2013

Brigham Young University, in partnership with Alpine, Nebo, Provo, and Wasatch School Districts, was selected to receive an English Language Acquisition: National professional Development Program federal grant from the United States Department of Education.  This grant is in the amount of $1.5 million across the five-year period of the grant. The goal is to use BYU’s 19-credit ESL endorsement program to lead 225 regular teachers and paraprofessionals to ELL endorsements.

There are five main grant activities. First, the five districts (density statistics qualify each as rural) will recruit the requisite quantity and quality of participants from their highly impacted schools. Second, district facilitators for these courses will be trained. Third, courses will be delivered and completed. Fourth, the quantity of educators endorsed as well as the quality of their preparation will be evaluated. Finally, a systematic two-year support will be provided for completers of the ESL endorsement.

The TELL program is a series of six video-anchored courses coupled with a practicum of ongoing and integrated fieldwork. Based on research-based knowledge and practices for ELL students, TELL presents foundations, second language acquisition, assessment, second language literacy, content-based instruction, family-school-community, and practicum courses. The grant pays for participants' tuition, course materials, facilitator training, and teaching salaries.

Since 2000 BYU has developed and successfully piloted this new program within its consortium districts, resulting in 6,500 registrations among in-service educators and 2,500 among pre-service educators. This is made possible through use of an innovative and flexible video-based education delivery system called ProfessorsPlus. The Professors part of the system includes instructional guides, CD-ROMs of classroom practice, and carefully crafted video segments that interweave student, teacher, family, and community voices with international and national university experts to illustrate important academic content. The Plus portion of the system relies on masters-prepared and ELL-endorsed facilitators to lead cohorts of learners through the TELL program at local sites.