bilingual teacher education
In 2017, the Massachusetts Legislature finally voted to make bilingual education legal after a 15-year experiment with Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) that prohibited most forms of language programming for bilingual students. While the 15-year law severely curtailed bilingual education in Massachusetts, it did not eliminate it, and a few programs withstood the assault on the language rights of children. However, bilingual teacher education was completely eradicated, so those remaining bilingual programs had no pipeline with which to staff their programs when positions opened up. They provided all their own professional development for new teachers on site after they arrived.
Since the change in the law, my colleagues at Boston College, María Brisk, Mariela Páez, Anne Homza, and I have worked to build the Bilingual Education Certificate program (BEC), designed to provide our student teachers access to the coursework leading to state bilingual endorsement. We have also developed a professional learning application of the BEC for teachers currently teaching in bilingual programs who did not have the opportunity to be trained as bilingual teachers because of the previous law.
Since the change in the law, my colleagues at Boston College, María Brisk, Mariela Páez, Anne Homza, and I have worked to build the Bilingual Education Certificate program (BEC), designed to provide our student teachers access to the coursework leading to state bilingual endorsement. We have also developed a professional learning application of the BEC for teachers currently teaching in bilingual programs who did not have the opportunity to be trained as bilingual teachers because of the previous law.