One of the goals for the elementary teachers going home for the summer was to participate in some sort of professional development that would benefit our school. I began searching for options, and almost immediately found a conference in Sacramento during the third week in June entirely on the topic of Bilingual and Two Way Immersion schools (which is what we are!). My principal encouraged me to sign up, and paid for the entire event. I even convinced my mom to come with me, so that we could dialogue together and process what we were learning. If you don't know her, she's a teacher too. :)
It turns out that this conference was the 22nd annual conference organized by ATDLE, which stands for Association of Two Way & Dual Language Education. Most of the conference was focused on Spanish, which is the other language most bilingual schools focus on in the states.
I don't want to overwhelm your brain with "teacher-ese" but do want to share a few of the things I learned that I believe my staff will be able to apply to our school (for those of you who are interested). It's exciting to be able to learn new things and have the opportunity to do so.
1) I learned some valuable grouping strategies. When you have a class filled with students who speak two different home languages, it's important to get them talking. Educators are moving away from "teacher centered" lessons and towards "student centered" lessons, where the teachers direct, but the students discuss and talk about the material in appropriate ways. It helps to increase critical thinking.
2) The goals for bilingual education are two fold:
a. The students have high levels of oral and academic language proficiency.
b. The students are able to read and write at or above grade level, and have social and cultural competencies.
3) Research demonstrates that students who learn in two languages are outscoring students who are learning/speaking only in English.
3) I learned ways to better teach English to my German students during our partner language time.
5) I learned some valuable ways of helping students read with purpose, so that I can show my students that some texts are worth a level of focus and attention.
6) I learned about the Common Core Standards that are sweeping the nation. They've become a very big deal since I've been gone, and I really don't know that much about them. The overall theme is that the Common Core Standards call for a lot of group collaboration among students, and require critical thinking and analyzing.
One of the fun bonuses of the conference was that my mom and I got to do a few fun things on our evenings off. We ate some good food, and went to downtown Sacramento. Honestly, we were a bit wiped from the intense seminars and workshops we were attending, but it was good overall. I'm looking forward to sharing my notes with my coworkers in August!
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| Fun selfie with the sunlight in downtown Sac. |
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| The view from our room one evening. |
