eaching. Classroom teachers and teacher educators — two professional groups who bear the primary responsibility for educating children — rarely get an opportunity to work together as colleagues. Once their credentials are completed, teachers become inundated with classroom and school responsibilities. Similarly, teacher educators can be consumed by state-mandated requirements for credentialing programs. When teachers and teacher educators are able to step outside their respective classrooms in schools and universities, and find themselves together, it can be in rigid roles of student and teacher — with teacher educators as “experts” rather than a group of professional peers seeking solutions to shared problems. However, when teachers and teacher educators do collaborate, the results can powerfully transform learning in the classroom.

earning. One great challenge for modern schools is providing an equitable, high-quality education for a widely diverse population of students. In many districts, such as the Los Angeles Unified School District, the majority of students speak languages other than English at home. The complex difficulties associated with education for diverse students, particularly those who are English learners, can feel overwhelming.

ollaborative. The Teaching Learning Collaborative at Antioch University Los Angeles brought together teachers and teacher educators to address the challenge of educating English learners in the Los Angeles Unified School District.  Through an innovative program in professional development delivered between Fall 2004 and July 2007, we explored collaborative, inquiry-based teacher professional development.  Read more about the TLC program in the About TLC section of this website.

On this website 

We created this website to share the TLC program with others who are interested in collaborative, inquiry-based forms of professional development related to teaching English learners. TLC for K-8 Schools (PDF) contains complete instructions for developing similar programs and may be downloaded from the K-8 Schools page.  Other pages in the K-5 Schools section briefly describe our project, lessons learned, and classroom inquiry. The Teacher Educator section contains TLC for Teacher Educators (PDF), designed for university instructors and fieldwork supervisors, and TLC For Student Teacher Mentors (PDF), designed for master teachers and fieldwork supervisors. Other pages in this section briefly describe our project with these groups.

We hope that schools and teacher education programs will use the kits, resources, and immediately usable strategies on this website for professional development and teacher training that is supportive and collaborative.  TLC is flexible! You can do what we did, or you can adapt the materials in many different ways--at a relatively low cost—with results that improve instruction for English learners and all students.

From our website to your school or university: Every step and all materials for the entire TLC program are contained in the TLC Kits. Also, please visit Resources, which contains all background materials and Strategies which takes you directly to useful strategies to use with English learners. We encourage you to use our TLC materials to create your own collaboration. Create a program that fits your needs! Everything you need is here.