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ESOL Licensure

The World Language and ESOL Department of Richland County School District One has begun routinely offering coursework towards adding ESOL as a field to a teaching certificate. Participants in the ESOL Licensure Cohorts should become familiar with the information below before committing to participating in the cohort.

 Adding ESOL to a Teaching Certificate in South Carolina

Interested teachers can find this information at the SC Department of Education web page for Adding Certification Fields & Endorsements.

 The SCDE allows adding ESOL to a professional certificate in two ways-

  • ESOL as a Teaching Field
  • ESOL Endorsement

The purpose of this page is to advise Richland One teachers on the processes needed to add ESOL as a Teaching Field and the benefits of doing so.

 

Benefits of Adding ESOL as a Teaching Field 

  • Learn to support and accommodate your Multilingual Learners (MLs) and add valuable teaching skills to your professional repertoire.
  • The extensive coursework and experience needed for this add-on provides certified content teachers with the expertise to apply practical and theoretical knowledge to their content teaching in order to integrate academic language instruction and support.
  • Every student in our classrooms acquires their education as an academic language; this theory and accompanying strategies are proven by research to benefit all learners, monolingual and multilingual.
  • Teachers with at least one course towards adding ESOL are able to teach their content as a sheltered course, which will provide any MLs eligible for ESOL services with valid ESOL Program Delivery minutes.
  • Teachers with ESOL fully added as a teaching field are able to transition to ESOL teaching positions depending on program needs and hiring processes at various schools (transitioning teachers to the ESOL classroom is not the intent of the ESOL Licensure Cohorts in Richland One).

 

The Process of Adding ESOL as a Teaching Field

ESOL must be added through coursework; it is not eligible to add by exam only.

Most information regarding the coursework needed to add ESOL can be found in the document Guidelines and Requirements for Adding Certification Fields and Endorsements, updated by SCDE on 9/19/2019 (pgs. 12-13)

 Requirements to add ESOL by Coursework

  1. Bachelor’s degree or higher;
  2. Initial or Professional certificate at the early childhood, elementary, middle, secondary, or PK–12 level;
  3. Minimum qualifying score(s) on the content area examination(s) required by the SBE for Guidelines and Requirements for Adding Certifications Fields and Endorsements; and
  4. Completion of all required coursework with an equivalent of a grade of “C” or better.
  5. Required Courses
  • Principles and Strategies for Teaching ESOL to PK–12 Learners                        3 semester hours
  • Linguistics                                                                                                             3 semester hours
  • Teaching Reading and Writing to Limited English Proficient (LEP) Learners        3 semester hours

Two of the following elective courses:                                                                                 6 semester hours

  • Testing/Assessment for Language Minority Learners
  • ESOL Curriculum Design and Materials Development
  • Teaching English through the Content Areas
  • Bilingual Special Education
  • Second Language Acquisition for Teachers of PK – 12 Learners
  • English Grammar/Structure
  • Cultural Diversity in Education
  • Practicum in the Instruction of ESOL to Elementary and Secondary Learners. SCDE may waive the practicum requirement/course based on documentation of one year of successful experience teaching ESOL.

Once all eligibility criteria are met, educators must submit all of the following in order to apply for adding a certification field:

  • SCDE Request for Change/Action Form – Applicants may submit this form in advance to determine if any coursework previously taken might count towards adding ESOL. SCDE will provide the applicant with a letter stating what additional courses they will need to take. This step could save the applicant time and money.
  • Official Sealed Transcripts
  • Official Examination Reports (ETS)

For Richland County Scchool District One employees, any questions regarding this licensure can be directed to ESOL@richlandone.org. 

 

Adding the ESOL Endorsement

The benefits of adding this endorsement are similar to adding ESOL as teaching field, but differ in two ways:

  1. The coursework is less extensive and, therefore, does not offer a similar increase in professional experience.

  2. An ESOL Endorsement does not allow a teacher to be an ESOL teacher in South Carolina; SCDE has not published guidance as to the tangible benefit of this endorsement.

Applicants interested in adding the ESOL Endorsement should consult page 35 of the Guidelines and Requirements for Adding Certifications Fields and Endorsements.