By Lindsay Street, contributing writer | Some Upstate teachers and school administrators now have access to federal funds to meet the challenge of a burgeoning population of students not proficient in English.
The money — $3 million over five years — will be used to create curriculum and strategies that can be used across the state.
More than 30 languages are spoken at York County School District 3. In the nearby Lancaster County School District, students speak more than a dozen languages. At one Upstate school, there are as many as 100 students not proficient in English.
The state has seen a 150 percent increase in English learners and as many as 70 percent of immigrant children may not be proficient in English, according to Winthrop University.
Winthrop’s Center of Education applied for and received a $3 million Department of Education grant to help three Upstate school districts address the language barrier between students and teachers, and also parents and administrators.
Winthrop’s faculty says it is hopeful the programs and resources developed under the grant can be applied at the statewide level through open-source resources for teachers and through work with the state’s department of education.
The grant will be doled out over five years and support students learning English through teacher, faculty, family and teacher candidate development — not just focus on English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) or English as a Second Language faculty. Winthrop’s College of Education was selected among 49 institutions out of 337 applicants nationwide for the grant.
The College of Education’s Jim and Sue Rex Institute for Educational Renewal and Partnerships works with teachers and school districts surrounding Winthrop. The institute applied for and will implement the grant in the three school districts: Lancaster, York 3 and York 4. In those three school districts, the predominant language of English-learning students is Spanish.
The federal grant funds a program called “Next Level: Network for Leading Education that Values English Learners,.” It builds off a 2007 Winthrop grant entitled “Teaching Teachers WELL” that also focused on English learners.
According to longtime educator Sue Rex, the new grant is part of the institute’s ongoing professional development and research to aid teachers in the state. She said the institute saw a need in the districts and responded with the grant application.
“This is a major innovative effort … to really try to meet one of the primary needs these teachers are asking help for,” Rex said in a telephone interview earlier this week.
Winthrop College of Education Associate Dean Lisa Johnson and College of Education associate professor Kelly Costner wrote the grant. Both spoke to Statehouse Report this week about the grant and initiative.
“We hope that we’re going to be able to create some curriculum strategies to be used throughout the state,” Johnson said.
She said the application arose from a “constant conversation” with school districts on their needs. She said the grant will allow the institute to work with teachers on strategies that work in the classroom and beyond.
“It’s the whole-school community working to build these skills,” Johnson said. She called it a “wrap-around approach.”
Next Level will fund graduate coursework for teachers who want to pursue certification for teaching English learners, support Winthrop’s educator preparation faculty with professional development allowing them to learn and develop new English learner skills, and allow current Winthrop teacher candidates to take advanced course work focusing on English learners.
The grant also will help districts implement a six-week Parent Institute in schools.
Teachers and administrators will get a glimpse into how the grant will affect their district on Oct. 24 at a kickoff event at Winthrop. Lancaster Lead ESOL teacher Susan Cauthen said that while her district has nearly tripled ESOL teachers in the last nine years, she looks forward to making more improvements in aiding immigrant students with learning.
“The hope is that it will help us improve instruction for our English learners. The more mainstream teachers understand and how to teach them, that’s just going to bring about positive outcomes for our English learners,” Cauthen said.
She said that at her school district, the growth of English-learning students has outpaced the growth of the overall student population.
Lancaster ESOL teacher Monica Vrooman said it can take up to three years for a student to become socially proficient in English, and it can take up to seven years for a student to become academically proficient in English.
- Find out more about the program and its resources at www2.winthrop.edu/rex/.
- Have a comment? Send it to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
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