QTEL News: Building Classroom Community
This month, we’re featuring how to build classroom community as the school year kicks off and what leaders should get right about professional learning—and we invite you to take a quick survey to help shape WestEd's in-house ESL certification work.
Teacher Corner
Happy start to the school year! As your students return, we know that developing a meaningful classroom culture is high on your list of priorities. Check out this video of students from Bonham Middle School in San Antonio, Texas, describing the power of interactions in building community:
Leading with Purpose
The Power of Professional Learning: What Leaders Get Right (and Wrong)
We've all seen it: a PD day full of energy, followed by a binder that quietly gathers dust. In this month's featured article, Annette Gregg, WestEd's Senior Director of Multilingual Learners, argues that great teaching deserves serious professional learning—not "teacher-proof" strategies, but rigorous, inquiry-based experiences that build teachers' judgment. Drawing on QTEL's work nationwide, she offers three conditions leaders should prioritize—coherence, alignment, and inquiry—plus a real district case study and questions you can use right away to evaluate your own PD plans.
Read the full article here.
Voices From the Field
QTEL In-House ESL Certification: We’d appreciate your perspective!
Are you struggling with teacher shortages or trying to build your bench of educators who are certified to teach multilingual students?
Teacher shortages are hitting schools with high populations of Multilingual
Learners especially hard, and in-house ESL certification pathways are one promising solution (Garcia & Weiss, 2019). As WestEd explores how to best support districts in this area, we'd appreciate your perspective on local needs, priorities, and the types of programming that would be most valuable. The survey takes approximately 5–7 minutes. Thank you for sharing your insights!
Interested in learning more? Read about our work supporting Reading School District’s In-House ESL Certification program in Reading, PA, here, or watch a webinar about the work here.
Upcoming Opportunities
2027 QTEL Winter Institutes
We are excited to announce that registration is now open for the 2027 QTEL Winter Institutes, taking place January 11–14, 2027 in Washington, D.C.
We are offering two professional learning opportunities designed to strengthen educators' and leaders' capacity to support English and Multilingual Learners through rigorous and engaging instruction:
Leadership in English Learner Education for site and district leaders who want to deepen their understanding of quality instruction for English and Multilingual Learners and strengthen their ability to support and lead instructional improvement.
Coaching for QTEL Implementation for educators who have previously completed a QTEL Building the Base or a QTEL disciplinary institute and are ready to further develop their expertise in instructional coaching and QTEL implementation.
Space is limited, so we encourage you to register early to secure your place.
Team Highlights
Join us in Denver this October at the NCSM Annual Conference and NCTM Annual Meeting & Exposition
Teacher-driven Capacity Building for Multilingual Learners: Collaborative Lesson Inquiry Cycles
Explore insights from over 15 cycles with 20 teachers in 3 districts engaging more than 200 students. Examine observation tools for quality interactions that drive iterative improvements as teachers lead the conversation.
Conference: National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics
Presenters: Haiwen Chu, Monique Evans
Date: Wednesday, October 28th
Time: 7:45 AM
Engaging Multilingual Learners in Quality Interactions: Structured Sorting Tasks
Experience a sorting task and analyze how intentional design focused on structure, grouping, and language can support access to rigorous mathematics for Multilingual Learners.
Conference: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
Presenter: Monique Evans
Date: Thursday, October 29th
Time: 4:30 PM
Activity Design to Broaden Participation for Multilingual Learners: Applying Basic Research to Classroom Practice
Learn how the structure of activities increases Multilingual Learner participation in discourse. Apply ideas about distributing information to amplify the language and learning opportunities of tasks.
Conference: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
Presenters: Haiwen Chu, Monique Evans
Date: Friday, October 30th
Time: 8:00 AM
