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The University of New Mexico

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Media Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821
scarr@unm.edu

August 16, 2007

Federal Grant to Help UNM College of Education Begin Literacy Project

The College of Education at the University of New Mexico has received a five-year, $1.5 million federal grant through the U.S. Department of Education designed to train more teachers in strategies to meet the academic needs of English Language Learners or ELL’s. The grant will fund the Academic Literacy for All Project (ALA), which will develop and design activities to improve UNM’s teacher education program, better preparing teachers to provide effective instruction to students with limited English proficiency.

“One of the big problems is that ELLs’ oral language English proficiency outpaces their literacy development,” said Holbrook Mahn, associate professor of Language, Literacy and Sociocultural Studies (LLSS) in the College of Education, who is the project director for the grant and co-principal investigator with Leroy Ortiz, associate professor, LLSS and director of the Multicultural Education Center.

“While the number of ELL’s has increased, the number of teachers trained in effective instructional strategies to meet their needs has not. The goal of the grant is to train more teachers to help English language learners develop academic literacy, especially at the secondary level,” Mahn added.

“This funding will help provide teachers with the skills they need to help students become proficient in English,” said Sen. Jeff Bingaman.

The high percentage of ELL’s in the state creates a domino effect in relation to students failing in school. According to Mahn, New Mexico has one of the highest percentages of ELL’s in the country. Many of these students fail to reach grade-level proficiency on New Mexico standards-based assessments because of their lack of academic literacy, which also contributes to them failing and dropping out in school.

“They need language and literacy development in their science, math, social studies and language arts classes, but their content teachers have not necessarily been educated in ways to help them,” Mahn said. “A comprehensive and integrated effort is needed to address this problem.”

Mahn and Ortiz have developed five different comprehensive initiatives for the ALA project including: the creation of a professional development summer institute for UNM faculty, Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) and Los Lunas Schools (LLS) classroom teachers and administators; the development of courses and curriculum in UNM programs involved in educating teachers; the creation of professional development teams in APS middle and high schools to educate teachers on fostering ELL’s language and literacy development as they learn content; creation of an Academic Literacy for All web site; and collection of training assessments and data on ALA project initiatives’ influence on APS and LLS ELLs’ academic achievement. Each initiative is designed to build long-term capacity.

The ALA project is comprehensive because of the different populations that influence the instruction the ELL’s will receive. They include UNM faculty being responsible for educating teacher candidates, pre-service teachers, APS and LLS professional development personnel, APS and LLS classroom teachers, and ELL’s in APS and LLS.

Over the duration of the five-year grant, Mahn estimates that 35-40 UNM professors will have attended the ALA summer institute and nearly 1,000 teacher education students will have taken courses influenced by the ALA project. Approximately 90-100 APS and LLS teachers will have become experienced ALA team leaders for on-site professional development, more than 500 teachers will have participated in ALA activities, and several thousand ELL’s will have taken classes taught by ALA-trained teachers.

Mahn added that he would like to see a “trickle down effect” in regard to academic literacy that ELL’s receive by extending the program to students in grades 3-5. Mahn says the elementary schools could address the academic literacy needs of ELL’s at an earlier age to ensure a higher success rate as they move through middle and high school.

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