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Since December 2003 we have been working in partnership with the New York City Department of Education to improve the academic achievement of the city's English learners in secondary schools. We do so by engaging the teachers of EL students and the supporters of these teachers in deep and generative professional development intended to increase their capacity to promote quality learning and teaching.
The models designed to carry out the work of this three-year partnership are different for teacher professional developers and for teachers, although they crisscross and build on each other. The partnership has iterative components, with a different focus each year:
Year 1: Building the Base Institute
Year 2: Disciplinary Literacy
Year 3: Strengthening Change at the School Site
This five-day institute provides educators with a firm base of theoretical understanding and consonant strategies for effectively teaching academic language to English language learners. The QTEL model links theory and practice, helping participants "build the base" of understanding for successfully carrying out academically and linguistically rigorous work with students in the process of learning English as a second language. more »
Another aspect of the first year of work is the coaching provided for teachers as they implement scaffolding practices in their classes.
The focus of the second year, this component involves working with teachers in five disciplinary groups: mathematics, science, social studies, language arts, and beginning English as a second language. The work is intended to deepen participants' understanding of content knowledge by studying substantive and generative concepts in the discipline, and the discourse used in the disciplinary community to express ideas and processes. Additionally, this stage covers the development of pedagogical subject matter knowledge: how to effectively teach specific concepts to the specific students — English learners and English speakers — that teachers have in their classes. The goal is for students to gain deep conceptual and procedural subject matter knowledge that also will be generative; that is, that will help them learn new important ideas in the subject matter in increasingly autonomous ways. Emphasis is placed on the metacognitive and metalinguistic expertise teachers need in order to provide their students with high-challenge and high-support tasks that develop students' conceptual, academic, and linguistic abilities.
The third-year focus is on the school as the unit of change. Building on analysis of how quality teaching is being offered to English language learners and other students at the site — strengths to be capitalized on and roadblocks that need to be removed — participants offer, implement, and study ways of enhancing the education quality at the site.
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