English Learners Workforce Investment initiative (EL-WIN)
AN INITIATIVE CREATED BY THE EMERGING BILINGUAL COLLABORATIVE
What is EL-WIN?
The English Learners Workforce Investment Initiative, or EL-WIN, provides philanthropic resources to California local education agencies (LEAs)–especially those that serve small and rural communities in the Central Valley and LA County–to work in partnership to recruit, prepare, and provide early support to the very best UPK teachers who:
Reflect the rich racial, cultural, and linguistic diversity of their three- and four-year-olds
Receive support and guidance to pursue meaningful PreK-3 careers and give back to their communities
Deliver instruction that celebrates and sustains children’s home languages and cultures while ensuring that children’s first years of schooling set them up for a lifetime of opportunity
EL-WIN’s flexible resources are designed to support regional and local partnerships in ways that strategically augment state Universal Pre-K (UPK) and workforce funding, explicitly center multilingual learners, and strengthen the bridges between the Pre-K and TK-12 systems that make up early childhood’s mixed delivery system.
Flexible philanthropic dollars can be the “glue” to center young multilingual learners and bridge Pre-K and TK-12 workforce efforts.
Why is EL-WIN Important?
California urgently needs to recruit, train, and support an early educator workforce. The state is making historic investments to offer transitional kindergarten (TK) to all four-year-olds by 2025. That means hiring tens of thousands of new teachers and teacher assistants statewide in just a few years’ time.
Equally urgent is the need to ensure that the staffing needs of the mixed delivery system that together with TK programs support all four-year-olds and their families–including Head Start, California State Preschool, and private early education providers–are also met.
Early educators must reflect students’ backgrounds and be skilled in supporting students’ linguistic, cultural, and racial diversity. Six in ten California children under five live in a household where a language other than English is spoken. Multilingualism and multiculturalism are tremendous assets, and California history has taught us that if those assets are not centered, it will have devastating consequences for the young children who are the state’s future.
Tackling these twin issues requires cross-division, cross-sector work at all levels of the system to develop culturally and linguistically competent, diverse UPK workforces communities need in a meaningful, sustainable way. EL-WIN is here to make that easier for LEAs throughout California.
What does El-Win Do?
EL-WIN Centers Young Multilingual Learners In Workforce Development Today
There are two main ways that we do this:
State wide, we serve California county offices of education, school districts, charter schools and institutions of higher education to write multilingual learner-centered state workforce grant applications that center multilingual learners and their families.
EL-WIN has supported leaders from Compton USD, Kern COE, LACOE/Head Start, Lompoc USD, Montebello USD, Salinas City ESD, and Tulare COE to center multilingual learners in their UPK Plans and state workforce grant applications, helping to bring in more than $25 million to support their local work in partnership with area two- and four-year colleges.
Regionally, we support leaders to facilitate TK-12, early childhood education provider, and higher education partnerships to recruit, prepare, and provide early support to English Learner-ready early educators.
How We Do Regional Work in the Central Valley
We are currently supporting five regional partnerships across six county offices of education in the Central Valley: Fresno, Kern, Kings, Merced, Stanislaus, and Tulare.
These partnerships bring together LEAs, early education providers, two- and four-year college leadership, and other regional partners under a common mission. EL-WIN supports them by providing:
CoachING
Responsive 1:1 and cohort coaching for EL-WIN Central Valley Partnership Leads.
Data technical assistance
The Data Technical Assistance Provider for the Central Valley is Community Initiatives for Collective Impact, led by Steve Roussos. Data technical assistance is available to help develop PreK-3 educator needs assessment and asset mapping to guide partnership work and build capacity of Partnership Leads to use data in ongoing work.
Meeting materials and other resources
Meeting objectives, agendas, pre-work, and facilitation PPT decks for Leads to use in regional partnership meetings.
Peer learning supports
Annual cross-Central Valley partnership community of practice meetings and monthly peer learning calls designed and facilitated to create opportunities for regional leaders to share resources, learn from each other, and engage as a broader region.
Grantwriting services
Professional grantwriters, trained in how to integrate multilingual learners, UPK, and workforce issues, are available free of charge to write competitive grant applications that will support partnership work.
Access to content experts
Content experts on topics such as multilingual learners, braiding and blending funding sources, and other opportunity areas are available, as needed, by partnerships.
Central Valley Advisory Group
Eric Sonnenfeld, Chair, Tulare County Office of Education
Barbara Daniel, Fresno County Superintendent of Schools
Heather Horsely, Fresno State University
Zenaida Aguirre-Muñoz, University of California, Merced
Alesha Moreno-Ramirez, California Department of Education
Xilonin Cruz-Gonzalez, Californians Together
OPEN SOURCE RESOURCES
How to Center Multilingual Learners in California UPK Plans
This is a valuable resource for California LEAs focused on UPK planning. It helps leaders effectively address the needs of multilingual learners, including dual language learners and English learners, as well as their families. This resource offers evidence-based recommendations for prioritizing multilingual learners within the planning template provided by the California Department of Education (CDE).
How to Center Multilingual Learners in Classified School Employee Teacher Credentialing Grant Applications (CSETC)
This document works in conjunction with the UPK Planning Guide. LEAs and their higher education partners can use this guide to integrate multilingual learner-focused language into narrative responses of CSETC applications to support classified staff–especially transitional kindergarten instructional aides and bilingual classified staff–to become transitional kindergarten teachers and/or teacher assistants.
This resource includes common ideas and foundations that LEAs can cut and paste into their draft applications, as well as prompts to develop specific local plans that build on these ideas and align with their unique contexts and needs.
Contact EL-WIN to Learn More & Access These Resources
Lisa Towne (Director) and Tia Kramer (Central Valley Coordinator) are the leaders supporting this initiative. Both are deeply committed to doing their part to ensure young multilingual learners in CA have diverse, asset-oriented educators and a bright future.
Contact Lisa Towne at ca.elwin.info@gmail.com for more information.