Thank you for your interest in DSF Consulting, a woman-owned small business dedicated to supporting the achievement of English Learners.

May 2012 brought some exciting news that we’d like to share. We will be facilitating Florida’s revision of their English Language Proficiency (ELP_ standards to ensure they reflect the academic language necessary for ELs to access the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). We’ll begin with creating the ELP standards in Kindergarten through second grade with a kickoff meeting in June in Palm Beach Gardens. We’ve assembled a team of teachers, administrators, and researchers from across Florida and look forward to supporting Florida in this endeavor. This ELP committee meeting will coincide with the first of DSF Consulting’s presentations on implementing the CCSS for ELs at the Florida CCSS Institutes in four locations across the state in June and July.

In addition, DSF Consulting was asked to create an EL blueprint for the SEED schools, which are high-performing, college-preparatory public boarding schools that serve students from traditionally underserved communities. SEED schools currently operate in Washington, DC and Maryland and are expanding soon to Ohio and Florida. We will begin this assistance by researching relevant EL demographics and data as well as laws and regulations in these four locations to provide guidance on how to best educate ELs in a unique boarding school environment.

Diane also provided two professional development sessions to teachers in May. She presented about incorporating academic language instruction for ELs to teachers from across the state of Pennsylvania. She also provided a PD session to mentor teachers in the New York City metropolitan area from the American Museum of Natural History’s new Master of Arts in Teaching Earth Science certification program to prepare these mentors to work with their incoming teacher candidates on teaching ELs.