Real-life classroom videos help train teachers of English Language Learners

Training K-12 teachers how to best interact with their students for whom English is not a first language is challenging on many levels. Beyond coping with the obvious language barriers, these teachers must draw on numerous techniques and approaches to reach all their students.

But now a Stanford-developed new (It’s not really that new – this is year 3) online version of the required California Cross-Cultural Language and Academic Development (CLAD) certification is making training for teachers of English Language Learners more accessible and meaningful. The program was established by School of Education faculty member Kenji Hakuta.

“Given the large number of English Language Learners in the Bay Area and across the nation, and the shortage of prepared teachers, we wanted to find a way to go above and beyond the traditional lecture model and make the theory and research more meaningful,” says Elsa Billings, who began work on the Stanford CLAD project with Hakuta while she was still a graduate student in the School of Education in 1999.

Today, Billings is as an assistant professor at San Diego State University and an ongoing member of the Stanford CLAD team, a project associated with SCIL. The project is led by Stanford Professor Guadalupe Valdés. Billings is thrilled to report on the team’s progress:

“We came up with the idea that wouldn’t it be great if we could go into real classrooms and show real kids with teachers using the techniques that worked,” recalls Billings of the initial idea for the program. With a grant of Title III funds, which target English learner students, Billings and her colleagues began videotaping classrooms. The goal was to create high quality materials that could be offered online to teachers across the country. Quickly, though, they realized that making the videos was the equivalent to documentary filmmaking, not their area of expertise.

Teachscape (www.teachscape.com), a private web-based organization offering online videos for teachers, turned out to be the ideal partner.

“Teachscape was creating a video library with video cases ranging from literacy to science to math,” says Billings. “One area they were lacking was teaching English language learners. It was a perfect match. We had the theory and the experience but lacked the video making skills so we developed a relationship that began as a labor of love.”

Subsequent support from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Title II, allowed Billings and her colleagues in the Stanford CLAD project to collaborate with Teachscape to create the videos. Each case study offers layers of support with links, notations, commentary and even homework suggestions.

Currently California teachers can use the videos once they have signed up to take the Stanford CLAD courses through their own school districts. CLAD participants are teachers who are already in the classroom, but who either got their credentials before the CLAD requirement or who hav e come from another state. Districts sign up with the Stanford CLAD program and advertise to their teachers, who then enroll and take the three courses. When they complete the courses (which involve viewing the videos, reading supplementary texts, and completing assignments that are posted in an online discussion forum), they get the CLAD certificate from the state.

Access to the free video library is open to teachers, administrators, and teacher educators for use in professional development.

The model is “a real hybrid,” says Billings, combining high quality interactive video with face-to-face instruction.

“We have found if we come face-to-face with the teachers in training at the first two sessions then they can go on and complete the course online,” explains Billings. Stanford’s CLAD sequence is made up of three consecutive courses, and all three are now offered through the online program.

“This is so important on a number of levels,” Billings concludes. “It goes back to the whole idea of creating high quality materials for instructors throughout the world. We are getting calls from teachers who live in the middle of the mountains or the desert and who don’t have access to educational materials of this high quality. It tells me the hopes of the Internet are really coming true.”

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For more information: http://ellib.stanford.edu/

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