Online Bilingual & ESL Courses for Endorsements

General Requirements

Bilingual Endorsement in the State of Illinois requires (a) 18 hours of course credit in specific content areas, (b) 100 clock hours of clinical experience in a bilingual classroom or three months of experience teaching bilingual students, and (c) successful completion of a language proficiency test in the non-English language to be taught or in English if the teacher’s native language is not English.

ESL Endorsement in the State of Illinois requires (a) 18 hours of course credit in specific content areas, and (b) 100 clock hours of clinical experience in an ESL or bilingual classroom or three months of teaching experience with ESL students.

Endorsement candidates must make a separate arrangement for the 100 clock hours of clinical experience or for the three months of bilingual or ESL teaching experience. For the latter, a letter signed by your school principal, verifying that you have taught bilingual education or ESL to English language learners for three months, will satisfy this requirement.

Test dates for the bilingual proficiency test required of candidates for the Bilingual Endorsement can be found at the Illinois Licensure Testing System site. Endorsement language tests are under Language Proficiency Tests for the Transitional Bilingual Certificate.

To qualify to teach the middle grades (5-8), Illinois candidates for the Bilingual or ESL Endorsement must also complete a six-semester-hour Middle Grades Endorsement. For more information about required courses and where to find them, see this site. Through the College of Education, online courses for the Middle Grades Endorsement are available.

When you are ready to submit your documents for the Illinois Bilingual or ESL Endorsement, use this 73-52 request form. You should submit the form to the Regional Office of Education where you have registered your teaching certificate.

If you are earning both the bilingual and ESL endorsements, you should submit a separate request form for each endorsement. If you are in the process of obtaining a teaching certificate from the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Council on Teacher Education will provide you with your bilingual or ESL endorsement when you have completed the endorsement and degree requirements.