About CAL
Meet the CAL Team
Jennifer Himmel
Associate Director, PreK-12 ELL Professional Development
In her role as the Associate Director of PreK-12 ELL Professional Development Programs at the Center for Applied Linguistics Jennifer Himmel assists with the directing of research-based professional development activities and provides technical assistance to schools, states, and districts in the United States and abroad. She also manages the CAL SIOP service line; creating educational products on the SIOP Model and leading professional development activities in the SIOP Model to over 50 schools/districts annually.
Jennifer began her educational career as an EFL teacher in Japan and Hawai'i to adult English learners and moved to the secondary level where she taught middle and high school content-based ESL in Hawai'i and Virginia. While teaching she began consulting for CAL on the development of the ACCESS for ELLs® assessment battery. Jennifer ultimately left the classroom to work at CAL as a Curriculum Developer and Research Assistant for the U.S. Department of Education funded project, Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners (CREATE) that investigated academic achievement of ELLs in grades 4th-8th. Jennifer has also had the opportunity to work on the Carnegie-funded project Exemplary Programs for Newcomer English Language Learners at the Secondary Level, a 3-year research project looking at programs and best practices for newcomer secondary ELLs.
In addition to her work in research and assessment she managed a graduate level, online course that teaches ESL and content area teachers how to create test items that assess language proficiency using the WIDA Standards, and assisted with the development and facilitation of the course Content and Language Integration as a Means of Bridging Success (CLIMBS)®, designed to assist educators in applying the WIDA English language proficiency standards in their teaching using a sheltered instruction approach. Jennifer holds a B.A. in Linguistics from the University of Kansas and a M.A. in Teaching English as a Second Language from the University of Hawai'i.
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