Iowa+Teaching+Standard+7

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Providing continued and effective professional development for sheltered English instructors is a challenge. With all the general professional development requirements throughout the year, finding additional time to do ESL-specific training can be difficult. Add to this the ineffectiveness of one-size-fits-all ESL training, and suddenly encouraging sheltered English instructors in their development and use of ESL and English language development strategies in their specific content areas and developmental ages becomes even harder. I have attempted to meet this challenge with an online and statewide collaborative approach that partners with the best of our state’s sheltered English instructors in a way that will facilitate easier, more effective, and more inspiring continued training. My aim is to strengthen sheltered English instruction in all classrooms by providing a non-threatening, user-friendly, and time-efficient professional development model that targets the specific content and developmental age of each sheltered English instructor. I developed this website to be a go-to location that all of our district's staff and families can utilize in order to all be unified in our understanding and application of best practices for our EL students.

From this ESL PD initiative, I was chosen by the Iowa Cultures & Language Conference committee to present my ESL PD model at the 2011 ICLC in Coralville. Below you will see my presentation.

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Setting Goals & Improving
 ====When I started with the Atlantic School District in January of 2005 with my first ELL, I realized right from the start that I (and obviously the school district) needed to be more educated about the world of ESL. I took the initiative to enroll in William Penn's Project Impact to get my ESL certification, as well as immediately enrolling in as many professional development workshops and seminars as I could. Once I had completed my ESL certification, I immediately took the next step to complete my teaching certificate. Once my teaching certificate was achieved, I again went the next step and worked to earn my master's. All along the road, I have shown great initiative in meeting and working to exceed the professional goals and responsibilities of being an educator. This is indicated not only by my own education that I have continued to undertake while continuing to work full time and raise my family, but also by the professionalism I exhibit in my job. One example is my planning and preparation of our ELL Plan & Program Guide when developing our district's ESL program. Another example is such things as the "2006 ELL Goals & Ideas" that is attached here. I feel this is a good example of the professionalism and responsibility I have always striven to attain as an educator. You will see that some of the goals I worked toward and ideas I had were things like "Prepare & Plan sheltered instruction staff development," "Complete ELL Plan & Program Guide," and "Present Culture Fair Project to Administration (Possibly "Celebrate Atlantic!" or "Atlantic - Celebrate the Diversity!" theme"). I also included specific classroom ideas and goals that I felt would increase comprehensibility, as well as organization, in my classroom.==== ====I wholeheartedly believe that all of the reflection, planning, goal setting, and continued education that we as educators can do truly help us be the best teachers we can be. Without it, we are nothing but mediocre, and mediocre is not my cup of tea.====
 * ====[[file:2006_ELL_Goals___Ideas.xls]]====

Continuing to Learn
 ====Attached is a filed entitled "ICLC Memo 12-10." This is a copy of a memo I sent out to my sheltered instruction teachers to encourage them to attend the Iowa Cultures & Language Conference that is held annually in Des Moines. I believe strongly in the benefits of teams attending professional development activities that are inspiring and worthwhile. The ICLC has always been a tremendous and easily accessible venue for ELL training. Whether it is the ICLC, other seminars or conferences, or simply AEA or school professional development, I feel it is my responsibility to not only continue to develop my own teaching methods and knowledge but also to encourage as many colleagues as I can to do the same.====
 * ====[[file:ICLC Memo 12 10.doc]]====