Jacqui LaFrance is a program assistant and English language specialist for the English Learner Collaborations Project, funded by a grant from the Library of Congress to the Massachusetts Council for Social Studies. She has worked as an elementary English language teacher for over 13 years in high- and low-incidence English Language districts in Western Massachusetts, and is a long-time user of the Library of Congress’ online collection of primary source photos in her EL curriculum.
She is a writer who co-edited and published Local Color, Stories of Westhampton’s First 225 Years in 2003. She participated in the 2012 Teaching American History summer course and volunteered at the Library of Congress in 2018 at their National Book Festival. With the Western Massachusetts Writing Project in 2022, she developed a professional learning session on historically responsive literacy using a lesson she co-created with 4th Grade EL students as they studied the last hundred years of history at the elementary school buildings in Easthampton, commemorating their move to a new elementary school (see blog post with more information). Her presentation also included local native history lessons from the Nolumbeka Project. Jacqueline completed her undergraduate degree at Smith College, majoring in Modern European History. She received her Masters of Education from UMASS Amherst focusing on Bilingual, ESL and Multicultural Education. In 2009 she served on the DESE’s MA English Proficiency Assessment standard-setting panel where she helped to identify raw cut scores for the K-2 grade span of the state assessment.