Professional Development

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ELL Endorsement Cohort | ELL District Meetings

Training and Educational Opportunities for Staff

The Multilingual and Multicultural Center offers a variety of in-service professional development opportunities for Portland Public Schools’ faculty and staff throughout the academic year. The goal of our professional development offerings is to raise staff knowledge and skills in educating culturally and linguistically diverse students.

School-based Professional Development Work Plan 2011-15

Offerings include:

• Monthly Language and Culture Workshops provide in-service experiences on a range of issues focusing on academic, social and culture issues that impact student achievement;
• The Language and Culture Bulletins are two page written summaries that cover a range of topics including writing, differentiation, mainstreaming, classroom instruction, diversity, reading, characteristics of ELL success in school, aspects of culture and language, and second language acquisition;
• Special Workshops and Trainings focused on the mental health needs of diverse children and youth. A national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, it is directed by the Center for Health and Health Care in Schools;
• School-based staff training addresses topics of concern in individual elementary, middle, and high schools related to language minority learners;
• Staff-specific and cluster in-service trainings are directed at ESL teachers and native language facilitators on issues relevant to curriculum and instruction;
• ACCESS for ELLs TM administrator training qualifying teachers to deliver the yearly mandated evaluation of academic language proficiency;
• USM off-campus graduate courses are offered in methodology, cultural diversity, applied linguistics, curriculum, and testing and assessment to enable participants to move towards State ESL Endorsement.