Project PULSE (Professional Development for Understanding and Learning Strategies for Educating ELLs) is an innovative, five-year, Title III Professional Development Grant project that works collaboratively with the Geary County School District and the Salina School District. Increasing diversity within both of these school districts, as a result of the amplified military presence at Fort Riley and large manufacturing plants in Salina, has resulted in the highest representation of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) Students these districts have ever experienced!
To better prepare educators to work with such diverse student populations, Project PULSE will provide 100 educators within the Geary County and Salina School districts a professional development program that will lead to an ESL endorsement. This professional development program is offered by Kansas State University and delivered via our distance education program, which offers the coursework on-site in each of the participating school districts. Upon completion of the professional development program, Project PULSE participants will have completed five graduate level courses. Extended professional development training in the research-based Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) Model developed by Dr. Jana Echevarria, Dr. Mary Ellen Vogt, and Dr. Deborah Short (Echevarria, 2006) will also be provided to educators within both of these districts.
We are now in year two of this five-year project! To truly understand the impact of this project and the role it has played in the lives of our Project PULSE Participants and the CLD students in these districts, please take a moment to read the testimonial of one of our current Project PULSE Participants:
"The ESL/Dual Language classes from Kansas State University have helped me become a better teacher overall. The classes teach me the importance of knowing the students as individuals. This is especially true when it comes to knowing the backgrounds of students whose primary language is not English. I have realized that teachers and society at large tend to make assumptions about English Language Learners (ELL) and we need to overcome those. This class has also taught and reinforced teaching strategies that help ELL students (and all students) learn the curriculum vocabulary. The ESL/Dual Language program at Kansas State University consists of all classes that would help all teachers in our ever-changing society."
High School Math Teacher
