Education Professional Development Program.

In many professional development efforts, the experts are the outsiders who are called in to share research findings produced far away from the school or district involved. Charged with developing a grant-funded program to provide support to English as a second language and bilingual teachers in Wisconsin, we wanted to offer teachers an opportunity to build on and share their expertise to meet the educational needs of increasing numbers of English Language Learners throughout our state. Working first as individuals and later in professional teams, participating teachers developed action research projects, which served both as entry points for the program mentor into the teachers ’ classrooms and as tools for understanding how to more effectively support teachers ’ growth as professionals. Through active mentoring and professional teamwork, the participants realized the potential for actio