I am a basic skills community college math instructor here in Los Angeles. This Spring is a very exciting time for our college. There are several campus initiatives taking place. Among them is the implementation of Assembly Bill 86, the Adult Education Consortium Program http://ab86.cccco.edu which will take effect July 1 2015. There are 5 major areas AB 86 seeks to improve:
Elementary and Basic Skills (Math & English)
Classes for Immigrants (ELLs)
Programs for Adults with Disabilities
Short term CTE programs
Programs for Apprentices
I’m meeting with the College President’s task force on Adult Education in 2 weeks and as you can imagine, at this point in the planning process there is a tremendous amount of work that must get done so that we can begin to address the goals of AB 86 by July 1st.
I plan to bring the pedagogy aspect to the table as one of the goals. I want to make sure the president considers professor accountability - because we can’t have classes for immigrants with professors who lack strategies for learning - the program will be ineffective in my opinion - several programs such as "First Year Completion" go negatively criticized by their respective students because “the professor was unhelpful.”
I’m asking that you help me add professional points to improve my conversation with the committee in terms of teaching basic skill Math to English Language Learners and offering classes for immigrants by putting effective instructors, hold all instructors to mandatory professional development for best strategies for ELLs, SIOP models, cyclic instruction, etc etc. Appreciate the help in advance.