Thank you for your interest in DSF Consulting, a small business that supports English learner achievement and teachers of ELs. We’d like to share some of the ways we worked toward EL equity during the past two months.

TESOL International Association Short-Term Certificate Program Expert Group

Supporting TESOL International Association with Three Projects

In addition to Diane Staehr Fenner’s ongoing managing of Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) TESOL reviews, DSF Consulting is also supporting TESOL International Association in two other ways:

• TESOL Short-Term Certificate Program Standards: We began a project to write TESOL International Association’s Short-Term Certificate Program standards. DSF met with a group of international education experts from around the globe in May 2014 to frame the standards.
• TESOL Kellogg Foundation MOOC: We met with professors from Teachers College and Hunter College to obtain feedback on the content of a pilot Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for a Kellogg Foundation-funded project focusing on early childhood teachers of ELLs.

Facilitating Professional Development Review Meeting

• Stay tuned for more exciting information on next steps after a very engaging three-day meeting we facilitated in Washington, DC with a group of researchers and practitioners from across the United States to review professional development materials for teachers of ELs!

Delivering Professional Development

• We worked with ESOL teachers at the Community Academy Public Charter Schools in Washington, DC on issues of referring ELs for special education consideration and helped them analyze and write suggestions for policy on that issue in their context.
• Diane Staehr Fenner worked with teachers of ELs from the Pittsburgh, PA area on developing ELs’ background knowledge and writing text-dependent questions within a Common Core framework in Allegheny Intermediate Unit.

New York City Curriculum Design

DSF Consulting is now collaborating with Diane August and the American Institutes of Research to help develop two Common Core -based ELA lesson prototypes scaffolded for ELs.

Writing and Presenting About Teaching ELs

• Advocating for English Learners nominated for book of the year! Diane Staehr Fenner’s book Advocating for English learners: A guide for educators was selected as a Forward Reviews 2013 Book of the Year finalist in the education category.
• Diane Staehr Fenner’s Colorín Colorado blog posts:
  • Preparing New Teachers to Work with ELLs: An Overview of the edTPA
  • edTPA Perspectives from the Field: Influence of CCSS and Impact on Teachers of ELLs
  • What’s your Elevator Speech About Your Expertise with the Common Core for ELLs?
• Collaborating with Classroom Teachers Webinar: Diane Staehr Fenner presented a webinar called Collaborating with Classroom Teachers in collaboration with Ellevation on April 8^th. The webinar archive can be found here.
• Presentation on Individualism versus Collectivism: Pedagogical Activities for Language Learners’ Self-Comprehension: Ellen Street gave a presentation on the individualist/collectivist dimension called Individualism versus Collectivism: Pedagogical Activities for Language Learner Self-Comprehension at Virginia International University’s 1^st Annual Conference on Language, Learning, and Culture.