by Lauren Hansen
Director of Promise Park City
On Friday, January 30th, Dr. Conley (the Superintendent of Park City School District) co-facilitated with Anna Williams (the High School’s English Language Learners teacher) an academic vocabulary training for community organizations in Park City. The recognition for the need of this training came out of a Promise Park City Steering Committee meeting where Dr. Conley identified this as an area where community organizations could help the District support students outside of school hours.
Representatives from thirteen different community organizations attended with a total of twenty-nine attendees and three Latinos in Action high school students. The training focused on better understanding the learning differences of ELL and ESL students and strategies to support their Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP).
Main topics included: research from Thomas & Collier regarding native language development and how it may take seven to ten years for an English Learner to catch up to his/her peers, producing two types of language (CALP and Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS)), Stages of Language Acquisition, and creating language-rich opportunities to help close the gap.
Three Latinos in Action students came for the second half of the training to answer questions and help the community organizations better understand their perspectives as Latino students in Park City School District. The training was well received by the community organizations and was informative for all that attended.
We look forward to future trainings offered by Park City School District in partnership with Promise Park City for community partners and are excited to see the District and community working together to support all children and families in Park City. A huge thank you to Dr. Conley and Anna Williams!
