Over 100 trainers ran 92 workshops for 1500 public sector school teachers in a one-day event in Oklahoma.
The mass training day, designed to help mainstream teachers to cope with the needs of English language learners (ELLs), took place at Putnam City North High School in a suburb of the state capital, Oklahoma City.
The trainers were drawn from the state’s specialist ELL instructors, people like Sally Diaz, an elementary teacher who ‘specializing in teaching children who are in the process of learning English’, according to local website News OK.
Just over ten per cent of the population of the southwestern state are now L1 Spanish speakers, according to the 2016 census – an increase of 85 per cent since 2000. Two thirds of them were born in the USA.
The state, which has been hit by a spate of teacher activism fuelled by the low level of funding for education, has revised its definition of English language learners in an effort to improve their outcomes.
