CATESOL24

Join the Material Writers Interest Group to meet other professionals in the ESL field. The focus will be on sharing materials and resources that you use in the classroom. You'll get a chance to network with people who teach the same population or populations you are interested in learning more about. The meeting will have the feeling of a social event. Come relaxed and ready to mingle!

Although education is a key element in the support of human rights (Burke et al., 2023), immigrant students still face considerable disparities in educational achievement (Goriss-Hunter et al., 2023), with nearly one-third unable to complete high school due to a lack of English proficiency (NCES, 2022). This study investigated teachers' perceptions of translanguaging and its impact on bilingual students' academic success, revealing that teachers find English-only classrooms unethical and believe translanguaging provides fair educational opportunities by valuing students' identities. This presentation will help K-12 bilingual teachers support their students in L2 communication, L1 maintenance, and academic knowledge development through translanguaging.

This presentation explores a survey conducted with instructors in our university's Intensive English Program, highlighting key findings regarding instructor values, job satisfaction, and areas for improvement. The results have led to substantial program changes and offer insights for enhancing instructor retention and program quality in similar educational settings.

Shifts in adult education facilitated by WIOA and CCRS now place stronger emphasis on workforce readiness and career development. This session will demonstrate how to integrate language acquisition and civics with workforce preparation so our adult ESL students can prepare effectively for the workplace. The presenters will share how applying critical thinking, digital literacy, self-management, basic academic skills, and workforce exploration into the traditional ESL classroom will prepare students for futures in the workplace as well as in academia, and interactions in the community. We will share tried and true strategies that can be immediately applied in any classroom.

Make every reading and listening activity you do in the classroom into CASAS prep! With the new CASAS STEPS tests, students are asked to incorporate critical thinking skills promoted in the English Language Proficiency standards (ELPs) to successfully navigate the assessments. These same skills should of course be part of every student's class experience. In this workshop learn the seven skills students need to prepare for CASAS and how to incorporate many of them and sometimes all of them with every reading and listening activity leading to improved CASAS scores.