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On campus living is currently optional, but quarantine seems to have made this year’s freshman class less ready for off campus living. We want to make sure that they have a support system in place, which they will have in the dorms.

Campus-based program with field and practicum experiences in elementary school settings culminating in Missouri teacher certification.

UMSL College of Education has a new Elementary Education Program that provides the choice of adding the state-certified P-12 endorsement in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) starting in Fall 2013. The number of immigrants and refugees has been increasing in the St. Louis areas, and the classrooms are having more English language learners (ELLs). The six-course TESOL program will help practicing teachers and teachers-to-be increase their competence and confidence in integrating the four language modalities into their academic teaching for the ELLs. The six TESOL courses cover general linguistics, second/foreign language acquisition principles, cross-cultural communication theories and practices, assessments with coping strategies, developing and implementing instructional materials with reflection.

The instructional design for each TESOL course includes the three stages:

• exploring students’ backgrounds and having desired results with the assessment strategies,
• enacting with or presenting the interactive activities with the explicit language targets, and
• expanding inquiry with guided reflection.

The teachers-to-be will be very competitive at the job markets due to the increasing needs of having knowledge, skills and disposition, not only for the ELLs, but for other linguistically diverse students. Teachers with these P-12 TESOL endorsement will also have opportunity to work as ELL specialists as well as classroom teachers.