CU Denver’s School of Education & Human Development’s Bilingual Education Specialist (BES) endorsement is a 10-credit-hour program that can be added to the Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education endorsement. The BES endorsement is designed for currently licensed teachers who are seeking career advancement and the knowledge and tools needed to work more effectively with multilingual learners.

This is a bilingual certification that is experienced primarily in Spanish. A majority of the graduate-level classroom discussions, reading assignments and papers will be in Spanish. Only ¼ of the curriculum will be presented in English.

Teachers with a BES certification are in high need, as the proportion of bilingual students and English learners in Denver Public Schools (DPS) and across the region grows.  The majority of DPS teachers in bilingual placements lack certification as bilingual specialists.

CU Denver is the only university in the Denver metro area to offer a BES certification.

Students in the new BES program will study various areas of pedagogy and linguistics, including second language acquisition theories, social perspectives on education and bilingual student assessment. All 10 of the required credit hours are taught primarily in Spanish.  The BES program operates in partnership with CU Denver’s Department of Modern Languages.

Instead of promoting a single “pure” Spanish, CU Denver’s BES program recognizes Spanish as it is currently spoken in the United States and in Colorado, incorporating dynamic local contexts of the language as it occurs in students’ lives.

Those who complete the program may apply to the Colorado Department of Education for the added endorsement.