The English language learner faces many social and educational barriers to acquiring content learning in a mainstream classroom. The teacher who understands the cognitive and social processes of second language acquisition is better equipped to help the second language learner negotiate the demands of classroom learning activities.
The Education Studies department is committed to increasing the number of teachers with these vital skills. We have several paths for K-12 teachers to gain the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) endorsement.
If you are a currently licensed teacher, you can add the ESOL endorsement through our program in two ways. It can be added as a stand-alone endorsement or incorporated into the Curriculum and Teacher Education master’s degree. With an ESOL endorsement and a demonstrated fluency in a second language, you can earn an ESOL/Bilingual endorsement.
If you are not yet a licensed teacher and interested in ESOL, the endorsement is included in our initial licensure and master's degree program, UOTeach.
If you are interested in teaching English outside the United States or to adults or a degree specifically in TESOL, please see the Language Teaching Specialization master’s program offered by the Linguistics department. The College of Education does not offer any stand-alone degrees in ESOL.
Licensed teachers who complete the ESOL program will have demonstrated the following:
- Proficiency in planning, delivery, and assessment of ESOL instruction
- Knowledge of effective second language program models
- Ability to serve as a resource to classroom teachers to ensure a student's successful transition from an English Language Development program to mainstream classrooms
- Ability to serve as an advocate for multi-literacy and multi-cultural education that supports additive rather than subtractive language development