Faculty members of Georgia State were awarded a federal grant totaling $2.7 million to help educate Georgia public school teachers on how to better work with students who are still learning English.
The project which the grant is funding will impact students in Dekalb County and Atlanta Public Schools and the Georgia State staff members leading the project hope it will lead to drastic improvements in the educational experience of English learning students in public schools.
Awarded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition, the five-year grant was given to Georgia State staff members Laura May, Nancy Schafer and Diane Truscott. May told The Signal that the project would involve work with both “in-service teachers” and future teachers who are currently “getting their certification and masters in early childhood and elementary education at Georgia State”.
The project, named “Todos Juntos: Uniting Communities to Improve Practice for English Learners (Juntos),” will seek to improve the academic achievement of students learning English and will do so by supporting professional development opportunities for teachers that focus on children learning English.
“There are two big focuses for the teacher development,” May said. “[The first is] integrated content, so integrating the disciplines like science and social studies with language and literacy development. Also, using family and community resources instructionally.”
While the project places a heavy focus on training teachers, it is designed to produce a positive effect on the educational experiences of Atlanta public school students learning English.
“I’m hopeful that it will allow students to better connect their out of school knowledge and resources with school practices and languages,” she said.
Timberli Williams, a student at Georgia State’s Atlanta campus who speaks both English and Spanish, believes that while helping to train teachers to work with students would benefit students, it would not alleviate all issues presented by the language barrier.
“You can’t put all of the pressure on the student or the teacher because the teacher is having to battle so much already by teaching the material to each student,” said Williams.
Williams said she believed bringing in supplemental teachers to assist with instructing students still learning English could further benefit the academic achievement of non-native English speaking students and make sure they “are advancing at the same level as English speaking students.”
Jose Melgarejo, another English and Spanish-speaking student, believes that while the ESOL system currently in place to assist English-learning students is one that works well, the educational experience for English learning students can be improved by the Todos Juntos project.
“I believe that the main objective of teachers is to observe their students, to figure out how they learn and teach them in a way that they understand the material,” said Melgarejo. “Therefore, training teachers to help students with language barriers will further develop their communication and comprehension between the two and positively improve students’ success.”
