Course Description:

This is the last course in the series of courses for the ESL Endorsement. The purpose of this series of courses has been to educate you to modify, adjust, and transform your practice in ways that will enable you to support the second language and literacy development of the ELs or EBs you are teaching in your regular classroom. An important way to support ELs language and literacy development is through engagement with the families and communities they belong to; therefore, this final course focuses your attention on creating partnerships with students, families, and the community. It seeks to enlighten educators about how they might involve parents and community memebers with the school community. We build on the learning from the previous five courses, in which you learned to enable your students to learn English and academic content at the same time. We enable you, as an educatore, to look outside the classroom to connect to students' families and communities as important influences in the lives of students.

Course Goals and Objectives:

This course builds on the following ESL standard: 

Candidates understand the role and contribution of family and community in the cognitive, linguistic and social development of students.  Candidates provide support and advocacy for ELLs and their families and understand the history, laws, and policies of ESL teaching.  Candidates work in partnerships with families and communities to create positive learning environments.  

The objectives are: 

• Acknowledge and follow local, state and federal laws and policies as they pertain to ELLs and their families. 
• Employ strategies to empower parents/families to participate in their child’s education. 
• Evaluate, select, and advocate for applicable models of family and community involvement and support implementation.  
• Demonstrate knowledge of how to use family and community members as a resource in learning.

Textbooks:

Family, School, and Community Partnerships: This is the main textbook for this course, an instructional guide found in an open access online platform developed by Royce Kimmons (EdTech Books). The book  includes all the learning activities, homework activities, and major projects you will be using for the course. 

National standards for parent/family involvement programs. Chicago: National PTA.

Gonzalez, , Moll, L., & Amanti, C. (2005). Funds of knowledge. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Digital Resources:

Family, School, and Community Partnerships

Second Language Parent and Family Involvement Case, Provo, UT: BYU

Learning Activities:

A variety of learning activities and assignments will be used to help students understand course concepts. Students become active participants through the use of self-assessment, reflective writing, jigsaw readings, concept application logs, portfolio work, student profiles, response papers, and technology. Assignments will focus on active learning and require individual, paired, or group work to enrich learning. These activities model the planning, teaching, and assessment strategies that can be used with language minority students. There are also homework activities that, when completed successfully contribute to the points accrued for grading. 

Attendance Policy:

This course is grounded in the belief that learning is a socially constructed process. In fact, active learning is a central feature of the course. Furthermore, the concepts presented through the video segments promote a conversational approach to learning. Concepts are immediately explored and applied through learning activities. As a result, much of the learning will take place through discussion and group activities that ask you to apply the research and theories about the teaching of English learners to your daily practice. Class discussion allows you to learn from your colleagues and to contribute to their learning; the insights of class members will be invaluable in your learning.

The experiences within the classroom cannot be reconstructed outside of class time with the facilitator or independently. Therefore, while attendance in and of itself does not count as part of your course grade, it is an important factor since recovering and reconstructing learning that occurs during class time will be difficult, if not impossible. Further, you will often be given credit for products developed during class time, and your presence is highly valued. In addition, students will usually work with colleagues and will frequently present findings and analysis during class time. For these reasons, it will be very difficult to make up class periods missed.

Grading Policy:

For the above reasons, full credit is only available to those students who attend each session and are present for the entire session. We recommend that if a teacher has to miss more than one of the eight sessions, they should be advised to take the course at another time.

In this course, your grade is based on participation in a learning process (i.e., process points) and the creation of individual and group products (i.e., individual and group product points) that emerge from participation in learning activities and homework. In addition, you will be asked to complete independent major assignments that will be evaluated for evidence of how you are learning and growing as a professional. Finally, you will present your professional development in relation to educating students of cultural and linguistic diversity in the final session of the course.

Grading Summary:

In the next chapter in this book, you will find a Total Points sheet you can copy and use to track your points earned throughout the course.

Grading Scale: You must earn at least a B- to pass this class.