A Road Made by Walking: University Faculty & EL Teachers Learning Together

Hones and Alderton cites that one of the pressing issues facing public schools in the US is the challenge of providing a quality education to English Learners (ELs). By 2011 the number of non-native speakers of English in the nation's classrooms had reached 10% of the overall student population, and in some schools that percentage is much higher. Teacher collaborations are proven strategies for helping students with diverse backgrounds, such as ELs, to achieve academic success. A collaboration between university faculty and ESL and bilingual teachers in area schools would, we felt, best serve the needs of our pre-service teachers as well as the needs of the schools and school districts in our service area. All of the participants involved in these faculty-teacher collaborations have spoken of the professional growth they have experienced through the opportunity. They have been challenged to rethink instruction and curriculum design, as well as, in the case of university faculty, the role of languages other than English in the classroom. Others have taken this collaborative effort further to present jointly at conferences and to discuss coauthoring journal articles. In this way the reach of these projects has been extensive, far beyond the immediate impact on the collaborating partners.