Professors at the College of Education work on educating teachers on facilitating the language and literacy development of English language learners.

by Steve Carr

One of the greatest challenges faced by educators today is assuring academic success for children whose second language is English. Last year, the College of Education at the University of New Mexico received a five-year, $1.5 million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Education designed to meet this challenge by educating secondary teachers on facilitating the language and literacy development of English language learners, ELLs, at the same time that they are teaching academic content.

The grant will fund the Academic Literacy for All (ALA) project, which will work with the Los Lunas and Albuquerque Public School Districts and the Secondary Teacher Education program in the College of Education to meet this challenge.

“The emphasis for the ALA project is on the secondary level because many ELLs develop oral language English proficiency in elementary school, but they have not achieved sufficient academic literacy to succeed in secondary school,” says Holbrook Mahn, associate professor of Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies (LLSS) in the College of Education.

Mahn is the project director for the grant and co-principal investigator with Leroy Ortiz, associate professor, LLSS and director of the Multicultural Education Center.

“While the number of ELL’s has increased, the number of teachers at the secondary level who have received professional development in effective instructional strategies to meet their needs has not. The goal of the ALA project is to meet this need,” Mahn adds. “ELLs need language and literacy development in their science, math, social studies, and language arts classes, but their content teachers have not necessarily been educated in ways to help them,” Mahn says. “A comprehensive and integrated effort is needed to address this problem.”

The ALA project includes five different comprehensive initiatives: the creation of a professional development summer institute for UNM faculty, Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) and Los Lunas Schools (LLS) classroom teachers and administrators; the development of curricula in UNM programs involved in educating teachers; the creation of professional development teams in APS middle and high schools to assist teachers in fostering ELL’s language and literacy development as they learn content; creation of an Academic Literacy for All web site; and collection of training assessments and data on ALA project initiatives’ influence on APS and LLS ELLs’ academic achievement. Each initiative is designed to build long-term capacity.

During the first year of the grant, 20 teachers from 10 middle and high schools in Los Lunas and Albuquerque participated in a UNM seminar that prepared them to become teacher educators who will conduct professional development at their school sites to help their staffs teach academic literacy to ELLs.

In the summer of 2008 these teachers joined with seven professors and instructors from UNM’s Secondary Teacher Education program in a two-week institute. During the institute, the UNM faculty discussed how they could help prepare pre-service teachers to meet the needs of ELLs. The public school teachers drew on the UNM faculty’s expertise in teaching content matter and on conducting professional development at the school site.

Over the duration of the five-year grant, Mahn estimates that 35-40 UNM professors will attend the ALA summer institute and nearly 1,000 teacher education students will take courses influenced by the ALA project.

Approximately 90-100 APS and LLS teachers will become experienced ALA team leaders for on-site professional development, more than 500 teachers will participate in ALA activities, and several thousand ELL’s will have taken classes taught by ALA-trained teachers.

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