My name is Richele
Dunavent, and I began my teaching career in the regular elementary classroom in
2000. However, I have been teaching ESL for the past eight years. I finally earned my National Board
Certification in ESL in 2012 after repeating several entries. It was a tremendous, rigorous personal and
professional growth experience. Since I received my ESL licensure by taking the
Praxis II without any prior coursework, I felt compelled to pursue a Master's
degree in ESL. In the fall of 2013, I enrolled in the M.
Ed.: Educational Studies Specialization ESL Focus Area and was the recipient of
the ELMS Grant while taking the ESL courses. I have grown
professionally and as an advocate for my ESL students since beginning this new
chapter in my life last fall. I have shared my new learning with my fellow
teachers and administrators, as well. I currently work with K-3 students which
allows me to put into practice all of the strategies I have learned and researched.
(Photo: My Italian grandmother and me.)
This
past summer I had the opportunity to attend Element 1, the Theory and Research,
or Tier I, of Guided Language Acquisition Design better known as Project GLAD.
What is Project GLAD? It is an organizational structure for an integrated,
balanced literacy approach to instruction. The four domains of listening,
speaking, reading, and writing are integrated into all content areas as they
are being interrelated with each other. The research behind Project GLAD finds
that language is acquired most effectively when the emphasis is on meaning and
the message being relayed. Strategies shared by Project GLAD are grounded in
the research of Cummins, Krashen, Vygotsky and many in the field of brain
research, among others. These strategies are valuable not only for English
language learners but for all students, since they are considered 'best
practices' that are research based. (Photo:
anchor charts from training)
I did not attend this training
alone, but with six other colleagues from my school. The training was provided
for select schools of both Henderson and Buncombe Counties in Western North
Carolina. The trainers came from the Project GLAD offices in California. The
Tier I Research and Theory Workshop lasted two days. We had the opportunity to
discuss and learn with other colleagues from the teaching profession; some were
classroom teachers, some ESL teachers, some EC teachers, and some were
Principals or Curriculum Coaches. The trainers were former classroom teachers
from Las Angeles or the surrounding area with high Hispanic populations and
high poverty rates. The strategies they demonstrated were energizing, engaging,
and full of academic language.
Since Sugarloaf, my school, had the largest turn out at
the Tier I workshop, we will host the Tier II workshop coming up in October.
Each morning we will attend a demonstration session where one of the trainers
will teach in a first grade classroom while the rest of us will be observing in
the back of the room with the other trainer explaining the techniques being
used with the class. Then each afternoon we will debrief and work together to
create thematic units based on the Project GLAD strategies. I can proudly say
that two first grade co-teachers have already been using some of the anchor
charts they saw demonstrated during the Tier I workshop. We are all looking
forward to the upcoming Tier II workshop. (Photo:
anchor chart by first grade teacher)