School of Education receives $1 million grant to improve ESL teaching

By Mike Frontiero
VCU School of Education

The United States Department of Education has awarded the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Education a five-year, $1 million federal grant to improve classroom instruction of students with limited English skills in the Richmond metropolitan area.

The grant initiative, known as "Project Professional Opportunities for Developing Excellent Teachers in English Second Language," is part of implementing the federal "No Child Left Behind" law. It is designed to ensure that all teachers - new and continuing in the field - have the appropriate knowledge, training and certification to teach students learning English as a second language and students with limited English proficiency.

The grant program started on Oct. 1, 2002 and runs through Sept. 30, 2007. Professor Judy S. Richardson, Ph.D., division of teacher education, is the grant's principal investigator. Richardson indicated the program will be especially valuable to new and experienced teachers as well as teachers seeking master's degrees in teaching, reading, or curriculum and instruction with a specialty in language arts programs.

Richardson notes that the project is especially important in metro Richmond because the number of English Second Language (ESL) families settling in the area has increased exponentially in the past 10 years, yet the programs to serve ESL children have not kept pace with the population. Due to the diversity of first languages spoken by the children who require ESL services, and the fairly monolingual experiences of teachers in the area, she said, the challenges are great.

"Unlike several states where the Hispanic population is high and a bilingual program has been in place for several years, the need for an immersion-English program has increased so quickly that this region has not had time to adequately prepare teachers," said Richardson.

Co-principal investigators Leila Christenbury, Ed.D., a professor of English education; and Jill Fox, Ph.D., a professor of teacher education, have already accepted several VCU students into the program and are working with the nearby school divisions to attract trained teachers assistants and teachers teaching in ESL classrooms. Workshops and courses will begin in summer 2003.