Rural Educators Accelerating Development of English Language Acquisition

The READ-ELA grant was a Title III National Professional Development project that assisted eleven teacher cohorts throughout western and southern Colorado to obtain the Colorado state endorsements in Reading Teacher, Linguistically Diverse Education, or both. Originally projected to have 129 teachers complete this program, the grant assisted 186 teachers including 12 who will finish spring 2008. Currently over 50% of those teachers have added the endorsement to their license while 7% or 13 teachers have added both endorsements.

The READ-ELA grant also assisted a handful of undergraduate paraprofessional and pre-service teachers. Three achieved their associate’s degree, and two students completed their initial teaching license. Two more are close to obtaining initial licensure.

The grant helped fund a demonstration classroom at ASC, updated the LINC library of teacher resources, contributed to the creation of partnership with Evans Elementary, and purchased materials for an after school program for second and third graders at Boyd Elementary. The grant offered numerous seminar opportunities for paraprofessionals and K-12 teachers, and supported the annual Parent Involvement Institute for parents and teacher participants.

Project READ-ELA met or exceeded all of its objectives.