On October 19, 2014, I posted an extended blog piece drawing from research I had recently done in my communities across the St. Louis region (urban, rural, suburban). At the time, based upon a research study about people’s perceptions of immigrants and knowledge of immigration policies, I was struck by how people make judgements about nebulous groups of “others,” even while they have good friends, who they respect and admire, who are part of those same groups. In short, we humans so easily create boundaries between “us” and “them,” even as we love and support the folks we may other at times.

Now, today, November 6, 2024, I am struck by how boundaries seemed to have been cemented, rather than blurred, over the past 10 years. I am struck — we still need inspiration and hope and a lot of work to blur the boundaries that divide us/them, and to try to figure out how to work together to build a better future.

I ask you to read through this old blog, to see what may resonate with you, to brainstorm how we each can individually reach out and work toward good, common ground with others: https://www.lisamdorner.com/blurring-boundaries/ … let me know what you think, dornerl @ missouri.edu.

Just last week, my colleagues (Drs. Kim Song and Sujin Kim of the University of Missouri-St. Louis) and I found out that we were awarded a new National Professional Development Grant. Our project, titled Strengthening Equity and Excellence for Teachers of English Learners (SEE-TEL) is funded by the Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition. Over $2.6 million will allow SEE-TEL to more effectively prepare hundreds of inservice teachers, administrators, teacher education faculty, and parents to be responsive to linguistically and culturally diverse K-12 learners. I’m especially excited because our grant activities will emphasize equity and civil rights for immigrant and refugee children from across the most high-need areas of Missouri, a state that is often passed over for seeming monolingual (but it’s not!).

This work is critical to help Missouri meet increasingly complex needs facing our schools in urban, suburban, and rural areas. Most significant, SEE-TEL will offer seven online TESOL courses and certification to a select group of 50 teachers from four school districts: Bayless (St. Louis area), Carthage (near Joplin), Kansas City Public Schools, and Columbia Public Schools. In addition, SEE-TEL will arrange intensive summer institutes to 120 educators and school leaders from these districts and beyond; training for university faculty members; and partnerships and literacy activities with 160 family members over the five-year grant project. A program evaluation, led by myself and another colleague, Dr. Christine Li-Grining of Loyola University-Chicago, will study the long-term impact of the professional development activities on participants and students.

The growth of immigrant and refugee children is significant across the state, which faces a shortage of teachers for emerging bilinguals (or “English Learners,” ELs) in our K-12 schools. For instance, Kansas City Public Schools currently has 3800 active students in English education support programs and 400-500 who are being monitored. Over the last school year they saw a 180% increase in refugee enrollment. KCPS’s largest language group is Spanish, but second to that is now Swahili, which just moved past Somali. They have multiple job openings right now for teachers in language education (posted on the Missouri Dual Language Network’s Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/moduallanguage/).

Job openings specific to this grant and more information about our project will be posted soon!