SWEL Certificate

ESL Teachers are the primary audience for the SWEL Certificate Workshop Series, with special sessions that include their school administrators. Each workshop can be completed as a standalone professional development opportunity, but ESL teachers who complete all three SWEL Certificate Workshops will earn a TESOL Certificate and digital badge.  

Workshop One: SWEL Contextual Language Workshop 

This Workshop builds upon ESL teachers’ existing knowledge of language learning and teaching, focusing on how to harness that knowledge and share it with general education teaching colleagues. The contextual approach to language instruction provides a framework for developing content area language instruction and strengthening home language support in the general education classroom.

Workshop Two: SWEL Professional Development Workshop 

The SWEL Professional Development (PD) Workshop will examine what makes PD effective for teachers and site-based decision making. Teacher participants will be trained to facilitate professional development for their peers and provided the materials to do so through their use of Teacher Leadership for School-Wide English Learning text and Framework.

Workshop Three: SWEL Coaching Workshop and Administrators’ Workshop  

Workshop Three brings together ESL teachers and their school administrators. ESL teachers will learn non-evaluative peer coaching principles, set SMART goals, and plan to implement the SWEL Coaching Cycle.  

Inclusive of the SWEL Coaching Workshop is the SWEL Administrators’ Workshop. Administrators who attend this workshop are leaders in schools and districts with English language teachers who are enrolled in the SWEL Coaching Workshop. Modules that are inclusive of administrators address the need for a school-wide English learning model, distributed leadership, and support in co-drafting an action plan for implementation. 

SWEL Extensions