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 four 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 browse through our website where you will find teacher comments, strategies in practice, video clips, and research-based outcomes!
