Carmen Rowe

Carmen Rowe has a lifetime of experience with languages other than English since she grew up as a daughter of immigrant parents speaking German as her first language and is also fluent in Spanish. Her work experience includes teaching Spanish and ESL at Conestoga Valley School District and serving as ELL Secondary Supervisor, ELL District Coordinator, and elementary ESL teacher for the School District of Lancaster. She earned a B.S. in Spanish from Brigham Young University, M.A. in Education with a concentration in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) from Eastern Mennonite University (EMU), and Ed. D. in Educational Leadership from Immaculata University.

Her action research for her master’s degree was “’Similarities and Diffilarities’: The Affective and Cognitive Benefits of Peer Response Groups Between Limited English Proficient and English-Speaking Students,” which she presented at the 39th Annual Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Convention. Her doctoral dissertation was “A Study of an English as a Second Language Co-Teaching Model” which investigated how a co-teaching model is implemented in a classroom with ESL students, what factors promote successful implementation and the perceived benefits of a co-teaching model.

Her other professional presentations include sessions and workshops for the Pennsylvania Migrant Education Program, Chester County Intermediate Unit, Delta Kappa Gamma Society International-Chi Chapter, PA Summit on Education Excellence for Latino Students, Lincoln Intermediate Unit, Pennsylvania Refugee Forum, Pennsylvania Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (PASCD), Millersville University, Mid-Atlantic Christian Schools Association and Conestoga Valley School District: “Cooperative Learning and ELLs,” “Cultural Diversity in the Classroom,” “Refugees in Our Schools,” “Legal Rights of English Language Learners: Current Problems, Possible Solutions,” “Sheltered Instruction,” “The Whole Child,” “The Learning Gap: What Can We Do to Operationalize PASCD’s Positions on Children and Learning,” “Methods of Teaching World Languages” and “Accommodations/Adaptations for the ELLs in Our Classroom.” In addition, she contributed to a book and a video published by ASCD: Total Literacy Techniques: Tools to help students analyze literature and informational texts and Total Participation Techniques: Making every student an active learner, respectively.

She served as a PDE evaluator and on the planning committee for the 5th and 6th Annual Governor’s Institute for ESL. Her work with creating a Refugee Parent/Student Panel for Lancaster, PA was featured in a national refugee training module produced by Bridging Refugee Youth and Children’s Services (BRYCS) in Washington, DC.

She has a Secondary Teaching Certificate in Spanish and an ESL Program Specialist certification from the state of Pennsylvania. She developed the ESL Summer Camp program at Burrowes Elementary School in the School District of Lancaster in conjunction with Janet Purcell. She also serves as a Spanish translator for a variety of public schools and organizations. She currently teaches the EDSL 551 Methods of Teaching ESL/FL and has also taught EDSL 581 Language & Culture for EMU.