Virtual Professional Learning Experience - English Language Learners Make Schools Stronger  

English language learners (ELLs) make schools stronger because they incite educators to think strategically and thoughtfully about how to create inclusive learning environment in their schools.  Through our work together, you will have a more comprehensive understanding of how to authentically connect with your ELLs, how to better understand who they are and the strengths they bring to bear, and how to strategically differentiate your instruction to meet their needs.

What makes this Virtual Professional Learning Experience unique is that it is designed as a wrap-around program that delivers personalized support to educators before and after they view the asynchronous learning videos, which leads to greater buy-in from the educators as they are motivated to learn and grow from the experience.  

Each Module includes the following components and is equivalent to 1 full training day for a cohort of 20 educators:
(There are 3 Modules available if you want to complete the 15 hours of Sheltered English Instruction that is recommended by the NJDOE.)

1. We will meet for an initial live session to break the ice, set expectations, and begin the important conversation of how to Up the Bar on the quality of education ALL students deserve. ​(Total time = 45 minutes)
2. Next is the asynchronous portion of the class, where you will view a series of videos at your own convenience.  Each video is about 10-15 minutes in length, which allows you the flexibility of learning in bite-sized chunks.  There are some reflective Food for Thought questions that are suggested for your own growth, as well as a few readings that will round out your learning experience. ​(Total time = 3.5 hours)
3. During our final live session, together we will explore strategies for making content concepts more comprehensible and accessible for your students, cognizant of the fact that your ELLs are simultaneously balancing the learning of language and content. We will engage in rich conversations as a whole group, and you will have the opportunity to engage with a few peers at a time in breakout rooms to further unpack and process the content. (Total time = 1.5 hours) ​

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​Here is the Introductory video, which will give you an overview of what you can expect from this remarkable learning opportunity. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at [email protected]

I look forward to working with you soon!

​Participant Feedback:

• "I enjoyed every minute of it. So well planned and executed. Susana, you were enjoyable to listen to! Liked being given the time to work on my own. Enjoyed sharing and listening to others. Liked the break out rooms for small group sharing."
• "The strengths of the work was the amount of information I gathered. I also have a new perspective on working with the children and their families."
• "I think the videos and articles helped to provide a lot of useful information. I liked the blogging because we could read what each of us learned, thought about, and experienced. We could make connections to one another."
• "I loved everything we did. It was all extremely beneficial."
• "I found this experience to be more engaging than many live pd experiences I've encountered. By breaking it up into smaller chunks, the information was easier to digest. We were able to reflect on the synchronous and asynchronous work, and discuss/ask questions in the final live session."
• "Thank you so much, Susana, for these extremely informative and helpful videos and articles.  They truly deepened my understanding of my ELL students and their families.  The reflection questions that you have provided at the end of each of the videos really give me more of a focus and direction of how I can better help and understand my ELLs.  I have learned so much, and I am so motivated to incorporate new activities to learn about all of my students and their cultural backgrounds."​
• "I really enjoyed learning from the comfort of my home, a great eye opener, and definitely got ideas to use in my classroom."
• "If it was in person it would probably be just as good. We utilized Zoom in the most effective manner and delegated lots of time to our legitimate concerns. I highly recommend this course."
• "I learned so much from Susana. I would love to learn even more!"
• "The asynchronous work was great! I liked that the videos were made by our instructor and that we were able to complete them at our own pace."
• "The videos were probably the most helpful. Suzana had a very clear explanation of the topic and showed genuine interest and concern for many of the issues that we have allowed in our educational system."
• "​I really liked that the videos were made available to us ahead of time to help us better understand the live meet. This not only allowed us to choose what we wanted to watch and when, but also gave us the opportunity to pause/replay videos as many times as we needed to for understanding. Thank you Susana!"
• "It was nice to be able to communicate with the other teachers in my district as we often do not get an opportunity to collaborate. It was also rewarding to learn new material from Susana."
• "I honestly thought it was really effective and found the whole program beneficial to my growth as a professional."
• "I was allowed to be in the comfort of my own home and did independent work at my leisure. I find that it also forces participants to be better listeners, since we all can't interject as early if we were in each others presence. Breakout rooms are also wonderful to discuss ideas about a given topic."
• "Liked the breakout rooms for small group sharing and brainstorming. It was nice to see and hear from everyone. I thought adding a video or two in between helped concentration. You were easy to listen too. Time given was perfect. Never felt bored."
• "I thought it was effective and informative about the current need of SEI and ELL needs in schools and the community."
• "What I really like from the ASYNCHRONOUS Learning is the variety of instructional interaction (such as online discussions, Email, social media groups and help to organize instructional materials) at different times and locations. The Synchronous Learning in which students learn at the same time using activities."
• "I enjoyed the structure of the VPLE. Having time to both discuss topics with the lecturer and my fellow teachers helped to give multiple perspectives on ways to help ELL students."
• "I liked the in person portion. I learned a lot about culture and climate."
• "I think that the short videos broken up into smaller subtopics were great! It made it easy to watch and less overwhelming, I didn't have to block out a huge portion of my day; I could watch clips here and there and gain more from each individual video."
• "All the components were helpful especially our turn and talks with our individual groups."
• "The presenter was widely experienced and my colleagues and I were, no pun intended, "in synch" as we have worked with many of the same students and shared the same views."
• "I learned a lot and I liked how we were able to break out into teams through the asynchronous component, and be able to be involved by watching and listening to the presentation synchronously, with the ability to use the chat link to type questions and answers."
•  "I thought it was great and that you were very warm and approachable."
• "I really enjoyed the videos that were provided prior to the presentation. I have been thinking a lot about TPR's to assist with language acquisition, past educational experiences and funds of knowledge and how we can build upon them in our classrooms, and the cultural iceberg and how it manifests itself in our students' lives."
• "I enjoyed the asynchronous videos and material because I could work through them at my own pace, take notes and even go search terms I was unfamiliar with or ideas that intrigued me like the country comparison tool at Hofstede's you gave us the link for."
• "The virtual breakout sessions were helpful and enjoyable. Also, I was able to get a deeper understanding of what ELLs feel and experience in our classrooms."
• "I really liked the real life stories of the experiences you had with different students applied to the theories of language acquisition in ELLs and during the zoom workshop I liked working together with my colleagues and I learnt about different strategies to make learning more effective for ELLs."
• "I liked how I could read the articles at my own pace and watch the videos in between teaching my online class and pursuing my physics degree."
• "I really liked and learned as new ways to get to know my students as also follow up and use the same methods multiple times throughout the year."
• "I like that we were able to learn by ourselves first and then got to meet up all together. Thank you!"
• "I enjoyed listening to everything-you speaking as well as hearing and sharing different cultural childhood/adult experiences with colleagues."
• "A chance to think about what we can do better in our classroom, a chance to communicate with colleagues, and the powerful video which makes us stop and see things through our students' eyes."
• "I enjoyed the breakout groups and working with a smaller pool of participants. As a certified ESL/Bilingual instructor, this was more of a recap of theories and instructional practices but useful none-the-less. Thank you for your time."
• "I enjoyed being split up into groups. It allowed for teachers to collaborate more and made teachers feel more comfortable to participate in discussions."
• "I enjoyed the whole group discussions and the break out groups during training. I also found the video resources and articles to be very relevant."
• "I enjoyed that people were able to comment while you were speaking, so it kept things moving without interruption. I also liked we were able to disperse quickly into groups and then come back together quickly, much quicker than if we were in person." 
• "I liked that we were asked to provide our own personal experience in an effort to relate to our own student's feelings. I also liked the breakout groups because it gave everyone more of an opportunity to speak."
• "This virtual professional learning experience was very well done. I understand given the circumstance, it would have been done differently. However, I thought the use of slides, video, breakout groups and articles were all great and very informative. This is a PD that I feel added to my knowledge and experiences as a developing teacher and I praise Ms. Matos-Kruck for her delivery and expertise on the topic."
• "I liked the use of short but informative video clips. I also liked the use of breakout groups within the synchronous component - I think it's nice to speak to a smaller cohort and then hear about what other groups were discussing that was similar/different from my group."
• "What I learned was that I have to work on self improvement as a teacher to better facilitate learning for my students."
• "I really enjoyed the training session and learned a lot of valuable information that I can bring into my teaching moving forward. I would love to have another workshop with you in the future!"