Teaching Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students

Teaching Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students

Graduate Certificate

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Learn to support emerging bilingual students.

The certificate in Teaching Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students will offer teachers an introduction to the history and current policies and laws that relate to emerging bilingual learners in Colorado public schools. 

Throughout the certificate, you will learn:

  the process of language acquisition, 

  to develop skills and strategies to teach English and adapt your curriculum/instruction to the developing needs of emerging bilingual learners, and

  key strategies for engaging diverse families in your school and classroom communities. 

This certificate will meet the new universal state requirements for all teachers to demonstrate 45 hours of professional preparation to work with emergent bilingual students.

At the end of this certificate, you should:

  develop skills as an advocate and educator of culturally and linguistically diverse students;

  learn the foundations of a multicultural curriculum and asset based pedagogies;

  learn effective instructional strategies for culturally and linguistically diverse learners.

We strongly encourage students to take the core courses in sequence.

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Paula Battistelli

Paula Battistelli

Course Descriptions

Asynchronous Subject Courses (2 Credits Each)

This course will contextualize policies and programming for bilingual and multilingual education for K-12 students by providing a historical foundation of bilingual/multilingual education in the United States. This course is embedded with opportunities for critical reflection to guide you in developing skills as an advocate and educator of culturally and linguistically diverse students.

In this course, you will learn the foundations of multicultural curriculum and asset-based pedagogies through reading, analysis and critical self-reflection on your own lived experiences and current educational practices. You will also have the opportunity to critically plan and outline a future unit of study that is inspired by multicultural curriculum and asset based pedagogies.

This course addresses effective instructional strategies for teachers of culturally and linguistically diverse learners. It explores evaluation and assessment tools applicable to CLD learners as well as instructional strategies for oral language development, literacy and content-area language while also explaining how to support children’s linguistic, cognitive, academic and social development.

Synchronous Capstone Course (4 Credits)

This is a 4-credit graduate capstone that culminates the CLD certificate experience in the Teacher Leadership program. In this course you will plan and develop a Teacher Leadership project which will be enacted in the coming school year. As a community of learners, we will aim to stay connected in the coming year as well to support one another’s leadership projects and development. This class is the fourth and final course in the certificate and serves as a jumping off point for building new teacher leadership tools related to teaching CLD learners and enacting culturally sustaining pedagogy.

Visit the University Catalog for a complete summary of the program as well as its requirements, course descriptions and learning outcomes.