Near $1M grant will help beef up skills
By Jaclyn Loveless

CSUB professors will team up this summer with the Delano Joint Union High School District to improve academic skills for math and science students.

CSUB was awarded a four-year grant of $986,078 by the California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC) in a competition last November, one of eight handed out statewide. During the course of the project, titled Content Academic Language Literacy Instruction (CALLI), 60 Delano teachers will receive intensive training and site-based coaching so they can strengthen the reading, writing, and speaking skills needed by their students to increase achievement. This program will impact about 4,000 students.

Emilio Garza and Debra Cook-Hirai are co-directors of CSUB's CALLI project, and say the high percentage of English learners in the Delano Joint High School District pose a unique challenge for teachers in this area. "With over 31 percent of the families in this district identified as low poverty and 48 percent of students identified as English learners there is a definite need to increase student achievement through extensive staff development for all math and science secondary teachers in the area," they said.

Cook-Hirai said academic language is defined as English used in professional books and characterized by the specific linguistic features associated with academic disciplines. "It is the language used by teachers and students for the purpose of acquiring new knowledge and skills. Literacy is learning to read, academic language is reading to learn."

She said that even though math and science scores in Delano have risen in the last year, "the teachers in Delano are extremely receptive to new ideas and concepts which will further increase CST (California Standards Test) scores and student motivation." Garza said, "They are especially interested in the peer coaching aspect, where their own peers present and model lessons so they can become better in their own teaching. They want the project to support teachers and not to be 'evaluative,' and we at the university are very supportive of that."

In June math and science secondary school teams, along with an administrator, will attend an intensive five-day training workshop, which will address topics such as literacy and academic language instruction with effective assessment techniques (especially in the core content areas), working with learners from diverse backgrounds, sheltered language instructional techniques, and a review of California state adopted content specified standards.

CSUB professors from the School of Natural Science and Mathematics, including Michael Lutz and Carl Kloock, and the School of Education will conduct this workshop. And research director Hisauro Garza from Sierra Research and Associates will assure the project follows strict guidelines set by CPEC. Participants will be expected to produce a school plan at the end of the week, which will depict how strategies will be implemented at their school site. They will also be expected to produce and edit a "best practice" video which highlights an instructional strategy learned at the summer workshop and which will serve as a reflective piece for the participant. The reflective video will be supported by Delano District funds.

The video will be posted to a website, available anytime, globally, where educators can view online peer review/coaching. "This program intends to build a professional development model which can be used in other schools across the state," Cook-Hirai said. "Building partnerships with school districts and other schools within CSUB is a critical factor, which has not been emphasized enough. Additionally, this project will also be a model for demonstrating collaboration between the university and local school agencies."

Follow-up sessions conducted throughout the year will emphasize the process of video editing, as well as instructional strategy implementation.

Participants will be paid stipends to attend the professional development sessions and to produce the videos. Cook-Hirai added, "The program is an intensive effort to build a professional development model which is proven effective for increasing student achievement and motivation in the classroom without increasing teacher burnout," she said.

The grant is part of the federal Improving Teacher Quality Program funded under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. It is the latest edition of a long-standing federal program aimed at improving student achievement through professional development for teachers. These grants require rigorous evaluation research to demonstrate how the professional development affects student achievement.

Howard Welinsky, CPEC chairman, says the grants play an important role in making sure every student has a highly qualified teacher. "The program has had a long-term impact on helping teachers strengthen their content knowledge and their understanding of effective teaching strategies - key elements of education reform," he said. "CSU Bakersfield and its partner schools should be proud of the quality of their proposal and its potential for improving teaching and learning in the south San Joaquin Valley."