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PROSPECTIVE APPLICANTS / CANDIDATES

  • CREATE is for educators in partner districts (Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett, Lynn, Milford, Medford, Revere and Somerville) working with English Learners/multilingual students. This includes English as a Second Language (ESL), Bilingual, SEI and content-area teachers, paraprofessional, administrators, and coaches.

  • There is an application process in place coordinated jointly by your district’s designated team (EL Directors) and the UMass CREATE team. You will need to complete a brief online application and answer questions about your current position, licenses and endorsements that you already have, the CREATE pathway that you are interested in pursuing, and a brief description of how CREATE aligns with your professional and personal goals. Applications are reviewed by district teams and CREATE directors, and decisions are made on the basis of district needs, fit for the program, professional goals etc.

  • Classes are offered once a week in the afternoon, after school dismissal, and they take place on site at the designated district school. All CREATE courses are supported with an asynchronous component on Blackboard.

  • You can earn one of the two Graduate Certificates: English Language Development (ELD) or Dual Language (DL) and the DESE Bilingual Endorsement. Beyond this, depending on your starting point, there are different pathways through CREATE to Professional Licensure in ESL, the MA DESE Bilingual Endorsement, and the ESL Initial Licensure. Finally, with five graduate courses under your belt, you will be halfway to the MA in Applied Linguistics with ESL Initial License. As a CREATE participant you have access to individual advising to map the ideal pathway for you, based on your background, your existing credentialing and professional goals.

  • You will be taking one graduate 3-credit course per semester for five semesters (including one summer semester). As with any graduate level course, you should plan on spending a few hours per week in addition to class time, to cover class readings and meet ongoing course requirements such as weekly reflections, online posts, a mid-term assignment, and a final project

  • The program you will be enrolled in (five courses and other activities) is fully funded by a Professional Development Grant by the U.S. Office of English Language Acquisition. It comes at absolutely no cost to you

  • On-site coaching is embedded in CREATE coursework. Participants meet with CREATE Coaches six times during the semester. The goals of CREATE coaching are: 

    - To celebrate and build upon our collective understanding of the theory and practices that support our work in the field of Multilingual/Multicultural education and Family and Community engagement. 

     - To support CREATE’s approach of a strengths-based parent engagement model by connecting with district and school - based parent/community liaisons to tap into existing initiatives;  and, using those initiatives as a platform for developing more in-depth connections with Multicultural families.  

     - To align our planning for coaching, with graduate course themes and topics, that enhance or extend new learning and lead to changes in classroom or school practices, community engagement for culturally and linguistically diverse parents and families and ML student success.  

     - To attend to individual or small group teacher needs, (by language group, peer group, grade level, or specialty), by providing coaching time that supports teachers in breaking down topics, reflecting on and processing new ideas, and/or in gathering feedback on written responses or projects.

  • CREATE is recruiting family and community members with the goal of building teacher understanding (by providing activities for teachers to unpack assumptions and beliefs) around EL families, recognizing their assets and stories; creating opportunities for dialogue and activities around EL school-family connections in individual schools or at the district level; building on and/or revisiting teachers’ understandings of the role of EL or ML parents and families in student success; moving toward the goal of building parent - family engagement, leadership and decision-making, leading to increased EL student achievement.

F. A. Q. 's

FAMILY AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS

  • You need to contact the liaison person in your district, their names and emails will appear on the publicity pamphlets of CREATE, or you can come to our meetings and we will add you to the list. Or you can send an email to create@umb.edu with the title “family and community involvement” in English or your native language.

  • Yes, we will have translators on site to support you during these meetings.

  • Just come to meeting and bring all your experiences as a parent, family or community member. We value your insights and appreciate you telling us all the activities you do at home to maintain your children’s first language or the ways you support their English learning.

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CREATE PARTICIPANTS

  • Please follow instructions here.

  • All UMass platforms work better in a Chrome browser so, if possible, avoid using Safari. If you still have issues, contact these IT resources:  

    http://umb.echelp.org/  

    Call: 1-855-789-7053 

    Click the Help button in your Blackboard course.

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  • Nothing. Paperwork may take longer than expected, especially between the summer and fall registration due to the great influx of students that UMass experiences every year. Don’t worry, you don’t need to pay anything, and your student account will clear up as soon as the paperwork comes through.

  • You can order your official transcript here.

  • First, do not worry about the hold. You will need to wait for some paperwork to be processed by UMass administrative services. You can always download an unofficial transcript following the instructions below.

  • It should be business as usual, however you need to consider a lesson that has at least 10 minutes of instruction. These walk-ins are focused on interactions between the teacher and all the students so keep in mind activities that show that interaction. Other than that, you don’t need to plan anything in particular.

  • CREATE coders work individually in each class, so one person will visit your room for the duration of a whole lesson. The coders will install a video camera in the back of the classroom and will not focus on students, they will stay in the back of the room all the time. You will have a recording device attached to you and we recommend you wear pants that have pockets– it will facilitate your free movement! Also, the coders will carry a notebook and pen to take notes. They won’t interact with students on purpose and will not ask any questions, except from the number of students, their grade level, and number of ELLs in the room. The coders may take pictures of handouts or other documents pertinent to your lesson.

  • Yes, we will visit you. CREATE has trained all the coders to visit special education classrooms. We don’t need to know the specific disabilities of the students, but ahead of your walk-in, the coders will contact you to ask you how many students have IEP and IFSP plans. Also, we will ask you about the context of your students and whether they are part of an inclusion setting, pull-out services, push-in services or self-contained setting.

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