Spring 2025 Instructional Conversation Foundational Institute - GCPS Only

Overview

The Center for Multilingual-learner Education, Research, and Innovative Teaching (MERIT) at The University of Georgia offers a 30-hour, interactive, foundational professional learning institute focused on a collaborative, conversation-based pedagogy for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) classrooms and its application

• The linguistics of second language acquisition

• Strategies for integrating language goals into content teaching

• Tools for encouraging collaborative conversations

• Ways to make content and language standards real and relevant for all learners while maintaining rigor

• Our Online Professional Learning Platform

The power of this system is that it provides a structure for teachers to integrate focused language goals with rigorous content instruction, rather than creating "one more thing" that you have to find the time for. The Instructional Conversation (IC) System is a "way of teaching" and conceptualizing teaching and learning that positively impacts student language development and opens the space for formative assessment and differentiation. To get a better idea of what we are talking about, the research base behind ICs, and what an IC looks like, take a few minutes to view:

• A short video example of a real classroom enacting an IC. As you watch, notice the kinds of academic and social language that the students are using. Also, note that this is a mixed ability group with ELs (including one child who arrived in the US with no English only 4 months before this video was filmed):

• Short Video Example of an Instructional Conversation (IC)

• A 30-minute video with an overview of the Instructional Conversation System:

• Instructional Conversation Overview (IC)

• An interview of students talking about what they gain from ICs and how they perceive IC lessons impact their learning:

• Students talk about Instructional Conversations

Cost

$850/person

Cost includes training materials provided electronically and physically via mail. Included amongst the materials is the course book, With a Little Help From My Friends: Conversation-Based Instruction for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) Classrooms (Mellom, Hixon, & Weber, 2019). Additional copies can be purchased at Teachers College Press or Amazon.

Payment Options

If you are a GCPS educator, with approval from your school administrator to participate in this IC Foundational Institute, the cost of your registration will be covered by the ML Program Office. You will need a Registration Discount Code given to you by your school administrator to waive the registration fee when you register. If you do not have a Registration Code, please contact your school administrator or Clara Harris at (Clara.Harris@gcpsk12.org) in the ML Program Office

Format

Virtual (Zoom)

March 11-12 & 18-19, 2025

8:30 AM-4:30 PM

Certificates

Participants will receive a MERIT Certificate of Completion which may be used for continuing education credit.

Policies

Refund Policy

No refunds for cancellation of registered participants. Even if payment is collected at a later date (i.e. via purchase order or check), completion of registration serves as confirmation of your attendance. Payment will still be collected if you choose to cancel before payment is processed. 

Substitution Policy

Substitutions are permitted up to 1 week in advance in order to ensure sufficient time to complete the pre-course assignments and to make the necessary administrative adjustments. Districts and individuals are responsible for transferring course materials, both physical and digital, from the original registrant to the substitute registrant. If your materials include a t-shirt, and the size is incorrect, substitute registrants may return their shirts to MERIT (at their own shipping costs) in exchange for a different size. 

Additional Questions?

You can contact Ana Gisselle Velez(ana.velezurbina@uga.edu) with any additional questions you may have about this registration form.