MinneTESOL had the honor of sending a panel of members to the TESOL convention in Philadelphia to present one of six “Best of Affiliate” presentations. The panel, consisting of Susan Ranney, Kelly Grucelski, Kelli Meyer, Molly Sanders, and Rainbow Espinosa, presented “Minnesota Stories About Teaching Academic Language.” The stories grew out of their experiences in enhancing their instruction of academic language as the four ESL teachers in various K-12 settings participated in an online class about academic language instruction taught by Susan Ranney at the University of Minnesota.

The panel presented stories from their classrooms at the MinneTESOL annual conference and were voted Best of the Conference by conference attendees. MinneTESOL then sponsored the proposal they submitted to the Best of Affiliate competition. For the four K-12 ESL teachers, it was their first experience of going to the international TESOL convention, and it was exciting to not only be able to attend the large convention but also to be on the program as presenters.

Using video and pictures, panel members shared specific lessons and approaches from their classrooms. In a charter school serving mostly Somali immigrants, Molly Sanders taught elementary students the language of cause and effect in the context of science content with activities such as having students match causes and effects using sentence strips, identify signal words, mark parts of sentences with colored markers, and then produce their own language using sentence frames.

Kelli Meyer told about teaching academic language to high school English learners while they prepared for a special event at a college called the World Affairs Challenge. As her students researched food issues for their presentations at this event, Kelli developed lessons that led them to analyze the use of demonstrative adjectives and nominalizations in academic texts, and to use these forms productively as they prepared their speeches.

As an example of academic language instruction in a different institutional setting, Rainbow Espinosa presented her work with students in a juvenile detention center, and demonstrated how she led adolescent English learners to analyze the perspectives of a history textbook using a functional linguistics approach.

In an elementary charter school serving mostly Spanish speakers, Kelly Grucelski developed posters to teach the use of hand gestures to enhance student learning of academic signal words. She also detailed her use of journal writing to develop students’ academic language skills for math classes.

We also described the work of panel members who were not able to make the trip to Philadelphia: Melissa Persson, who used Socratic circles to develop oral academic language with her students in a newcomer high school, and Iman Mefleh, who inspired middle school English learners to use academic language in debates and in a letter exchange with President and Mrs. Obama about the Let’s Move campaign. A common theme of all the stories was the sense of empowerment that English learners felt as they began to analyze, understand, and productively use academic language while learning academic content.

The audience at TESOL was engaged and asked many questions to understand more about how the panelists had overcome common barriers to academic language instruction. For the panel participants, the experience was a wonderful professional development opportunity. Outside of the time spent presenting, participants took full advantage of the wealth of other sessions offered at the conference and then shared what they had learned at the various sessions with each other in a gathering after returning to Minnesota.

One of the best outcomes of being chosen as a Best of Affiliate session was that it gave the opportunity of attending a TESOL convention to four classroom teachers who would otherwise not have been able to request the time off and travel expenses. Rainbow Espinosa applied for and was selected to receive a prestigious TESOL travel award. The other three teachers were funded by their schools.

The experience allowed the panelists to share our stories with ESL teachers across the United States and to bring many enriching ideas back to our classrooms in Minnesota. As Rainbow Espinosa said, “I think the most important thing I got was being inspired to keep learning, growing and doing my best. Teaching gets monotonous if you don’t refresh yourself with new inspiration from teachers all over the world doing amazing things! I saw the possibilities expanding of what and how to teach English. What an awesome experience!”

“Minnesota Stories” panel: (left to right) Kelly Grucelski, Kelli Meyer, Susan Ranney, Molly Sanders, and Rainbow Espinosa

Susan Ranney is the first vice president of MinneTESOL. She is a senior lecturer at the University of Minnesota, where she teaches courses for candidates for ESL licensure. She also teaches a course on academic language for inservice K-12 teachers.