Newberg-Dundee Public Schools educators will be ready with new skills to teach their students in the fall.

This summer, Jody Bader and Dr. Sara Schoenhals Martinez from OCDE Project GLAD® trained teachers on methods to help them engage with students, especially when it comes to language instruction. 

“Project GLAD is a model of language and literacy that shows teachers how to integrate English language development into the content that they already teach,” Schoenhals Martinez said.

In a training session last week, Bader stepped into a Summer School classroom at Crater Elementary and taught the class with GLAD techniques while local teachers observed. Schoenhals Martinez offered coaching, pointing out when and why Bader would leverage a particular technique.

What Is GLAD Exactly? 

Director of Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Jillian Felizarta explained how teachers use GLAD, which stands for Guided Language Acquisition and Design. (OCDE stands for Orange County Dept of Education, which is where the organization’s National Training Center is housed.)

“GLAD supports instruction for all students — particularly those working to acquire language and literacy,” Felizarta said. “GLAD helps students develop vocabulary and oral skills, using a  variety of strategies that are visually represented. It also supports teachers in creating routines for classroom management and student behavior.”

What Was the Training Like?

The schedule:

• The training lasted for six days. 
• During the first two days, teachers studied GLAD instructional strategies. 
• Every morning for the remaining four days, teachers observed the strategies modeled in a Summer School classroom while the trainers also coached the educators on where and how the GLAD strategies were being employed throughout the lesson. 
• In the afternoons on those four days, teachers would then collaborate with their colleagues to add GLAD strategies to their lessons. They prepped the materials to take back to their classroom so they’re ready to teach using the GLAD strategies. 

Did Teachers Find the Training Beneficial?

Project GLAD training has been popular in Oregon for many years, so many Newberg-Dundee Public Schools teachers are already employing the strategies in their classrooms. In addition, this is the third Project GLAD training that Newberg-Dundee Public Schools has hosted. 

Jordan Adcock, a fourth-grade teacher at Joan Austin Elementary School, said that her English Language Development co-teacher incorporates GLAD strategies in her lessons. She was thrilled to be coached in the methods that she’d seen her co-teacher practice.

“The direct instruction is amazing, having what she taught me reinforced,” Adcock said.

Two other Joan Austin teachers, Beth Humphrey and Lindsay Hayden also appreciated the training.

“This is going to be a tremendous help to my teaching practice,” said Hayden, who teaches fourth grade. “These types of skills are good for teaching all students.”

Humphrey agreed.

“The coolest thing, outside of the content, is the collaboration with other teachers,” added Humphrey, who teaches fifth grade.