Training Gets Boost

Faced with a shortage of teachers specializing in English as a second language, states and districts move to grow their own.

By Vaishali Honawar

Boston

Kate Cubbage is teaching English to a group of beginner English-language learners who sit, faces upturned, in a half-ring around her feet at Boston’s historic Mather School.

“Get your backpacks ready, because it’s time for school,” she sings, slowly at first, then faster, and the children sing along with her. Next, she points to a notebook, and they catch on: “Get your notebooks ready, because it’s time for school.”

Just two weeks earlier, these children, a mixed group of 1st and 5th graders in the 587-student school, spoke little or no English. But now, when Cubbage pulls out a stack of cards and asks them to identify the objects drawn on them, many...