ESD 105 is now officially certifying teachers to become their own in-school trainers for the popular Guided Language Acquisition Design program that is used to help students with limited English proficiency understand the classroom language of academic instruction. The agency is one of just three sites in the country now offering this trainer-of-trainers certification.

GLAD® is a program from California’s Orange County Dept. of Education that provides visual and oral strategies that teachers can use to help students connect with complex content and vocabulary information. Nearly 2,000 teachers a year go through the “Tier I” GLAD offering at ESD 105 that helps educators learn the strategies through a two-day workshop followed by a four-day classroom demonstration of GLAD’s methods at work.

Four teachers from Yakima County schools became the agency’s first graduates of the “Tier III”-level trainer-of-trainers program in February, and another three from Yakima’s West Valley School District obtained their certifications in March. The Tier III certification, which is involves completing a Tier II GLAD training as a prerequisite to become a trainer, will allow the newly certified teachers to teach the Tier I GLAD programs to the colleagues within their own schools.