Quality Teaching for English Learners Professional Development for Teachers and Education Leaders

What You Will Learn

Quality Teaching for English Learners professional development offers principled and practical approaches for effectively teaching the conceptual understandings, academic practices, and language that are critical to ensuring that English language learners achieve 21st century success.

Teachers will:

• Build on the strengths all students possess to realize their potential
• Simultaneously develop conceptual, analytic, and language practices in deep and accelerated ways
• Use research-based tools and processes to design high-challenge, high-support instruction incorporating well-scaffolded lessons that provide multiple entry points for the diversity of English language learners
• Structure quality interactions that promote lan­guage development, problem solving, and collaboration
• Develop students’ metacognitive and metalinguistic knowledge to support the development of academic literacies

Site and District Leaders will:

• Develop a vision for quality teaching for English learners and understand how to support teachers in their work to make classes with English language learners rigorous and accelerated
• Understand the different types of English language learners, their academic needs, and the types of programs available for their education
• Develop expertise in the design and structuring of successful learning environments for English language learners and their teachers

Who Will Benefit

• Teachers, K–12
• School and District Administrators, K–12
• Instructional Coaches, K–12

Service Details

QTEL’s professional development offerings include summer institutes, on-site intensive workshops and institutes, sustained on-site work with districts and schools, and online learning opportunities. We tailor our professional development services to meet a variety of audiences, settings, formats, and goals.

Online Professional Development

QTEL offers a variety of online professional development institutes for educators focused on the development of educator expertise to engage English Learners and all other students in deep, generative learning.

Pedagogy of Promise for English Learners is a four-module online learning series where participants learn how to design academically rigorous learning experiences for English Learners while offering them the supports to simultaneously develop language and disciplinary practices.

The QTEL Disciplinary Institutes offer an online learning experience that provides educators with a firm foundation of theoretical understanding for effectively teaching academic language while engaging in the kinds of learning experiences their students need to develop deep content knowledge and linguistic proficiency to succeed in school. Subject areas include Mathematics, English Language Arts, History and Social Studies, and Newcomer Students.

QTEL Summer Institutes for Teachers and Education Leaders

Our annual QTEL Summer Institutes offer national and international educators the opportunity to focus through the week on one of five crucial topics in the education of English language learners. Leaders learn how to model and support the development of a culture in districts, schools, and classrooms where all students are offered quality opportunities to learn. Teachers learn how to deliberately design and implement instruction for English language learners that builds their autonomy and aligns to today’s rigorous content standards.

On-Site Teacher Institutes

Our teacher institutes give principled and practical knowledge of how to implement high-quality, academically rigorous instruction for English language learners. Foundational and disciplinary institutes can be tailored to different grade bands (K–2, 3–5, 6–8, 9–12) and are offered in 3-, 4-, and 5-day sessions. Possible QTEL institutes include:

• Building the Base: Grades K–5
• Building the Base: Grades 6–12
• Mathematics
• English Language Arts
• Social Studies
• Science
• Beginning English as a Second Language (ESL)
• Development of Academic Literacies in Spanish

Instructional Coaching

Disciplinary coaching cycles are offered as follow-up support to QTEL professional development institutes. Teachers, teacher leaders, and site coaches can participate in discipline-specific cycles of collaborative or one-on-one classroom coaching and implementation support.

We also offer a coaching institute focusing on developing the capacity of instructional coaches to recognize, model, and support quality teaching for English language learners.

Curriculum Design

To support the implementation of instruction that weaves conceptual, analytic, and linguistic practices, we can design exemplar curricular units for schools and districts and support teachers in developing expertise in the design of instruction. We offer 3-, 4-, and 5-day curriculum design institutes as a follow-up to a QTEL disciplinary institute.

On-Site Leadership Institutes

Our leadership institutes are designed to help school and district administrators understand and apply school structures and processes that make it possible for English language learners to learn and succeed. Institutes can be offered in 3-, 4-, and 5-day sessions and then followed with site-specific formative instructional rounds.

Multi-Year Whole-School Professional Development

QTEL engages in multi-year partnerships with districts and/or schools featuring customized professional development for teachers, administrators, and instructional coaches.

Districts and schools that undertake multi-year QTEL implementation can engage local staff in a model of apprenticeship leading to the development of QTEL coaches with the expertise to support colleagues in the design and implementation of rigorous lessons. Additionally, we build the capacity of districts through QTEL professional development certification, which prepares them to become QTEL professional developers, certified to sustain and expand local QTEL implementation.

What Makes This Service Unique

QTEL professional development offers educators the opportunity to learn deeply about current theories of learning and disciplinary second language acquisition to engage in the practical shifts required to offer English language learners and other students quality education in the 21st century.

Through many years of research and practice, we have developed pedagogical principles that define the quality support English language learners require to learn in deep and accelerated ways. These principles have been explicitly elaborated, building observational instruments which teachers first learn to use on their own practice as they develop their pedagogical autonomy. Eventually they serve as observational tools for others to assess the quality of learning in classes and to determine the support needed by teachers.

Professional development services situate participant learning in the context of their discipline to develop sustained expertise to challenge and support all learners to excel.

QTEL professional development offers a coherent and comprehensive approach to building educators’ expertise in order to address the needs of English language learners. Professional development and follow-up services are modular in design. The menu of services that QTEL offers ensures that school and district needs can be met in diverse ways.

Our professional development providers are experts in English language learner instruction and in their content area, and are able to tailor professional development experiences to the needs of schools and districts.

Cost

Professional development costs are based on the scope of work to be carried out.

Learn More

Contact Patricia López-Hurtado at plopezh@wested.org or 415.615.3314 or complete the QTEL contact form.