SupportEd Fall News 2017

We are looking forward to an engaging fall with our facilitation of two online EL courses, ongoing projects, professional development (PD), and multiple presentations at the 2017 WIDA Conference.

Online EL Courses (October 10 – November 20)

We are offering a new course this fall on SLIFE and are also offering our popular EL advocacy online course. Stay tuned for another new course this spring as we add to our online EL course library.

• Effectively Reaching Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (SLIFE)
• Effectively Advocating for English Learners (ELs)

Projects and Professional Development

• Berkeley County School District, South Carolina. We are facilitating two different online book studies for educators in this district based on Diane Staehr Fenner’s book Advocating for English Learners: A Guide for Educators (2014) and Diane Staehr Fenner and Sydney Snyder’s book Unlocking English Learners’ Potential: Strategies for Making Content Accessible (2017). These book studies will include facilitated discussions of each book and online PD to support the content being discussed. Both book studies will culminate in a final face to face PD session with Diane in February 2018.
• Nearpod. We will provide a series of webinars on Academic Language featuring Nearpod’s unique interactive presentation platform.
• New York City Department of Education. We were recently added to the approved vendor list to provide PD in the areas of ELs as well as Early Childhood Education for the next five years.
• Professional Development for School Districts. We are providing ongoing professional development on many EL-related topics, including scaffolding instruction, teaching academic language, supporting SLIFE, EL family engagement, and teacher leadership and collaboration in support of ELs. This fall we will be collaborating with educators in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia.
• Syracuse City School District (SCSD), New York. This past summer, working with coaches from SCSD, we began a yearlong blended EL PD series with SCSD educators that incorporates face to face PD sessions, online PD, coaching, and face to face workshops. The topics being covered include: scaffolding for ELs, teaching academic language to ELs, EL family engagement, collaborating to support ELs, and formative assessments for ELs.
• U.S. Department of Education. In partnership with the American Institutes for Research and the Office of Career, Adult, and Technical Education (OCTAE) at the U.S. Department of Education, we are developing professional development materials to support the use of the English language proficiency (ELP) Standards for Adult Education that we supported the development of in partnership with the American Institutes for Research.

SupportEd’s WIDA Conference Presentations (October 16-19, Tampa, Florida)

We are excited to share our EL expertise and collaborate with 2000 educators who work with ELs at the fifth WIDA conference in Tampa, Florida. Please stop by our presentations if you are there! We will post our presentations here on our website if you are not able to join us in person.

October 17

• Action Research: Developing a Sense of Inquiry to Improve Outcomes – Jill Kester
• Collaborating to Build a Culturally Responsive School Climate for ELs – Sydney Snyder
• Leveraging and Developing Your Leadership Skills to Support English Learners – Diane Staehr Fenner & Sydney Snyder

October 18

• A CAN DO Coaching Framework to Support Teachers of ELs – Diane Staehr Fenner, Megan Moore, & Jill Kester
• Tearing Down the Walls: What We Must All Do to Help our ELs Succeed – Diane Staehr Fenner co-presenting with fellow Corwin authors Andrea Honigsfeld, Maria Dove, Margo Gottlieb & Tonya Ward Singer