Last week Digital Promise hosted our first-ever professional learning webinar Achieve Transformative Results by Teaching Academic Language on EdWeb.net. (Follow the link to watch it!) We were so pleased to hear that it was the #1 live webinar on EdWeb last week with 465 K-12 educators in attendance. They included Language Arts, ESL, Special Education, STEM, and Social Studies teachers. This confirms our conclusion that there is a real underserved need for professional learning in the field of academic language, cutting across content areas. Our 75- to 90-minute conference sessions this spring at NSTA and last fall at WIDA drew large crowds, packing the rooms. These science and ESL educators were likewise attracted by our focus on academic language.
Educators have spoken and we are listening! We are already scheduled to provide a full-length session at WIDA again this fall and intend to return to NSTA, too. We also aim to expand our circuit to include NCTM so as to share our session with the math educator community as well. Moreover, we intend to work with great partners like Digital Promise to find more ways to more broadly provide this important professional learning service to the educator community.