{"id":160951,"date":"2020-05-12T10:39:23","date_gmt":"2020-05-12T14:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?post_type=school-college-post&#038;p=160951"},"modified":"2020-05-12T10:46:27","modified_gmt":"2020-05-12T14:46:27","slug":"new-online-graduate-certificate-educating-bilingual-learners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2020\/05\/new-online-graduate-certificate-educating-bilingual-learners\/","title":{"rendered":"New Online Graduate Certificate on Educating Bilingual Learners"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Throughout her career as an educator, associate professor\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/education.uconn.edu\/person\/elizabeth-howard\/\">Elizabeth Howard<\/a>\u00a0says she has always seen teaching and supporting English Learners as a shared responsibility. Her vision led to the development of the\u00a0Neag\u00a0School\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/bilinguallearners.online.uconn.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Educating Bilingual Learners<\/a>\u00a0online graduate certificate program. The program offers general education teachers\u00a0and other school personnel\u00a0an opportunity to learn how to better support English Learners in their classrooms. The four-class, 12-credit graduate certificate can be earned fully online, making it accessible to educators across the country.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe whole point of this program is\u00a0to support\u00a0people who don\u2019t want to be specialists\u00a0\u2014 people who love being a secondary math teacher or love being a\u00a0school psychologist \u2014\u00a0but they have a lot of English Learners in their school and they want to be effective with them,\u201d says Howard.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">The program offers general education teachers\u00a0and other school personnel\u00a0an opportunity to learn how to better support English Learners in their classrooms.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>English Learners are the fastest-growing population in U.S. public schools, according to the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nea.org\/home\/13598.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">National Education Association<\/a>. This rise puts increasing demand on English as a Second Language (ESL) specialists and calls for\u00a0general education teachers\u00a0and other school personnel\u00a0to be\u00a0knowledgeable about how to support English Learners in their roles. Howard says\u00a0that even in the best-case scenario, English Learners do not spend more than\u00a0a few hours a week with an ESL specialist.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMost of the time, our English Learners are not with ESL specialists,\u00a0and so if everyone doesn\u2019t have a baseline understanding of how to help support them, they are not going to succeed,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Designing Diverse Coursework\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The idea for the Educating Bilingual Learners Graduate Certificate came as part of a previous grant proposal that Howard had drafted with former\u00a0Neag\u00a0School faculty member\u00a0Erica Fern\u00e1ndez. When denied funding for\u00a0the\u00a0grant, Howard continued to pursue the idea.\u00a0Neag\u00a0School assistant\u00a0professors\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/education.uconn.edu\/person\/michele-back\/\">Michele Back<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/education.uconn.edu\/person\/danielle-filipiak\/\">Danielle\u00a0Filipiak<\/a>, as well as Howard\u2019s former graduate student Eileen Gonzalez, have been instrumental in helping develop the certificate courses.<\/p>\n<p>The program consists of four graduate-level courses designed to\u00a0cover\u00a0several content areas:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Multicultural Education:<\/strong> building a foundational understanding of cross-cultural issues and the assets\u00a0that\u00a0English Learners, their families,\u00a0and their communities bring to the classroom<\/li>\n<li><strong>Educational Linguistics:<\/strong> focusing on the linguistic assets of bilingual learners and the language acquisition process<\/li>\n<li><strong>Sheltered Instruction:<\/strong> using a scaffolded approach to support students in a classroom where the instruction is happening in a language other than their home language<\/li>\n<li><strong>Language Diversity and Literacy:<\/strong> combining the themes discussed in the other three courses, with a specific focus on literacy development for English Learner students<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cThe whole program is designed to think about things from an asset-based perspective, to think about the benefits and the assets of the students and their families and their communities,\u00a0and\u00a0how to incorporate that into the classroom through culturally sustaining pedagogy,\u201d says Howard.<\/p>\n<p>For educators who may\u00a0wish to go on to become specialists who work with English Learners, it is important to note that\u00a0these courses are\u00a0all\u00a0on the state-approved course lists\u00a0for Connecticut\u2019s Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and bilingual cross-endorsements. Howard says they\u00a0selected courses across four different competency areas for both cross-endorsements\u00a0to ensure\u00a0appropriate depth and breadth of knowledge, and to enable participants to continue toward earning the cross-endorsements if they choose.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Flexibility and Inclusivity\u00a0in Online Education<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When designing the program, Howard says she wanted to be inclusive of practicing educators in the field as well as pre-service education students who want to earn the certificate as they launch their teaching careers. The\u00a0asynchronous\u00a0online format allows people the ability to participate according to their own schedules. The program also allows participants to complete the program at a flexible pace, offering\u00a0up to two academic years for completion if needed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor some people, taking two classes in the fall and two classes in the spring is not going to be sustainable, either financially or time-wise,\u201d says Howard. \u201cI wanted to make sure there were summer course offerings for practicing\u00a0teachers in particular, who\u00a0may find it appealing to be able to take\u00a0up to two of the classes in the summertime.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Some classes\u00a0may also be offered face-to-face\u00a0at the Storrs or Hartford campuses.<\/p>\n<p><strong>New Perspectives and Shared Responsibilities\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Howard says she hopes the educators who pursue the Educating Bilingual Learners certificate will come away with a sense of all the assets and resources that English Learners and their families bring, and learn how to incorporate those assets in the classroom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf we can acknowledge it, respect it, and use it in our instruction, I think it can help us go a long way toward meeting their needs,\u201d says Howard.<\/p>\n<p>She also hopes to instill a sense of shared responsibility among educators when it comes to teaching and supporting English Learners. It is not only up to the\u00a0individual\u00a0ESL or bilingual teacher to support these students; it is\u00a0a group effort among all educators, says Howard.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Applications are currently being accepted for the Summer 2020 semester. A bachelor\u2019s degree is required, and all application materials\u00a0should\u00a0be submitted no later than May 15.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/bilinguallearners.online.uconn.edu\/\"><em>Learn more about the Educating Bilingual Learners\u00a0Online Graduate Certificate\u00a0program.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Neag School&#8217;s new online graduate certificate program offers general education teachers\u00a0and other school personnel\u00a0an opportunity to learn how to better support English Learners in their classrooms. The four-class, 12-credit graduate certificate can be earned fully online, making it accessible to educators across the country. The deadline to apply is May 15. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":160952,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1855],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1879],"class_list":["post-160951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-neag"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 05:41:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160951"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160983,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160951\/revisions\/160983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/160952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160951"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=160951"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=160951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}