Highest Aspirations

Dr. Yue Vang, Director of the Office of Multilingual Learning at St. Paul Schools in Minnesota stopped by the booth to discuss equity for multilingual learners, a collective approach to EL education, and how the new ESSA regulations might make a positive impact for EL programs

Kristina Robertson, EL Program Administrator at Roseville Public Schools in Minnesota, chatted with us about the our collective responsibility to educate English learners, how ESSA might helping support teachers who work with ELs, and her favorite features of Ellevation for both administrators and teachers.

Laura Gardner of Immigrant Connections stopped by to discuss the ABC’s of family engagement, looking at EL students holistically, and a new awareness of what it means to create a welcoming environment for EL students and their families. For more on family and community engagement strategies, check out our full interview with Laura. 

David Holbrook of TransACT stopped by our booth at the WIDA Conference in Providence, RI to talk about the impact of ESSA on EL programs, shifts from Title 3 into Title 1, and family engagement. You can read David's bio and find his recent contributions on TransACT's website. To learn more about ESSA's impact on English learners, be sure to listen to our full podcast episode David Holbrook and Ellevation's President and co-founder Teddy Rice.

What are civil rights of English learners and how can schools sometimes unintentionally violate them? How can civil rights issues affect EL reclassification rates, access to advanced courses, and more?  Why do violations happen and how can schools avoid them? We discuss these questions and more with Dr. Ayanna Cooper.

Dr. Ayanna Cooper is an author, keynote speaker and advocate for culturally and linguistically diverse learners. She is the author of Creating and Sustaining Equitable Schools with English Learners (in press), co-editor of Black Immigrants in the United States: Essays on the Politics of Race, Language, and Voice (with Ibrahim, in press), and co-author of Evaluating ALL Teachers of English Learners and Students with Disabilities: Supporting Great Teaching (with Staher Fenner & Kozik). Her projects involve providing technical assistance internationally and in the U.S. to State Departments of Education, school districts and non-profit organizations. Dr. Cooper recently returned from an English language Specialist project in Kuwait. She was also recently elected to TESOL's Board of Directors for 2020-2023.

How might a conceptual framework help educators better communicate around EL program management, instructional practices, and more? How can using a framework encourage educators to assess their practice and identify where they can improve? What benefits does all this have for multilingual learners? We discuss these questions and much more with Ellevation’s own Adam Howard.

Adam is currently a project manager here at Ellevation Education, where he works with school districts across the country to onboard and roll-out a suite of software that manages data analysis, teacher development, and student instruction. He has an extensive background in education, having spent nearly ten years in the English Language Development classroom supporting learners from all over the world. Adam has spent his career focused on integrating 21st-century technology into the classroom, disrupting the outdated, and promoting equitable learning opportunities to empower all students. 

His background in educational technology contributed to his development of the SADI model, a conceptual framework that helps educators level set around English learner instruction and program management. The acronym stands for Simplification, Accommodation, Differentiation, and Integration. It is loosely based on the SAMR model, created by Dr. Ruben Puentedura that categorizes four different degrees of classroom technology integration. If you’d like to refer to the SADI model as you listen, you can find it at bit.ly/sadimodel.

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How does growing up in a diverse community impact the educational outcome of English learners? What kinds of learning experiences have the most impact on diverse learners? What advice would a recent high school graduate and former English learner give to students facing similar challenges? We discuss these questions and much more in our conversation with Take the Pledge scholarship winner Camila Garcia. 

Camila recently began studying English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign after graduating high school in Beardstown, IL. As we discuss in the episode, Camila is an avid reader, a quality which she believes helped her achieve English proficiency. She is particularly fond of The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak.  

Her story is an inspirational reminder of how all students can reach their highest aspirations when provided with the necessary support and opportunities in school. 

What does the research say about the benefits of bringing teachers of color into our classrooms? Are teacher licensure exams creating barriers to enter the teaching profession - particularly for teachers of color? How might alternatives like community based assessments help bring in more aspiring teachers of color? We discuss these questions and much more with Emery Petchauer.

Emery Petchauer is an associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. His research has focused on the aesthetic practices of urban arts, particularly hip-hop culture, and their connections to teaching, learning, and living. He is the author of Hip-Hop Culture in College Students’ Lives (Routledge, 2012), the first scholarly study of hip-hop culture on college campuses, and the co-editor of Schooling Hip-Hop: Expanding Hip-Hop Based Education Across the Curriculum (Teachers College Press, 2013).Dr. Petchauer also studies high-stakes teacher licensure exams and their relationship to the racial diversity of the teaching profession. Theories of social psychology and spatial studies inform this work, as do many years of working individually with preservice teachers to pass these exams. Dr. Petchauer has received teaching awards at both the high school and college levels, including the Board of Trustees Distinguished Teaching Award at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the nation’s first Historically Black University.

His most recent book, Navigating Teacher Licensure Exams offers practical, empirically sourced insights into the high-stakes licensure exams required in most states for teacher certification. This unique resource foregrounds the experiences of diverse preservice teachers, including teachers of color, to understand how they organize their preparation efforts, overcome self-doubt and anxiety, and navigate the high-pressure space of this important testing event. 

What is translanguaging and how does it affect language learning and pedagogy? What are the implications of language loss in both school and home environments? What kind of support do teachers of multilingual learners need most as they progress through their careers? We discuss these questions and much more in part 2 of our 2 part conversation with Dr. Sera Hernandez of San Diego State University.

Dr. Hernandez teaches university courses on multilingual education, bilingualism, biliteracy, language policy and English language development. Her research focuses on the impact of state and federal language and education policies on language and literacy practices in Spanish and English in schools, homes, and communities across California, the U.S. and internationally. Her work strives to better understand the language and literacy development of emergent bilinguals (i.e., DLLs, ELLs) starting in early childhood and specifically how educational language policies and program models facilitate or undermine language learners’ access to equitable schooling experiences.

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What has changed in bilingual teacher education over the last 5-10 years and how have those changes affected the field? How have policy changes and initiatives like the Seal of Biliteracy affected dual language programs and bilingual education? What are some of the most effective ways of preparing preservice and inservice teachers to work with dual language and English language learners?  We discuss these questions and much more in part 1 of a 2 part series with Dr. Sera Hernandez, Assistant Professor of Dual Language and English Learner Education at San Diego State University.

Dr. Hernandez earned her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education with a degree in Language, Literacy, and Culture. With an interdisciplinary academic background, her research bridges the fields of educational linguistics and the anthropology of education to examine the sociocultural, linguistic and political contexts surrounding educational language policies and bilingualism and biliteracy practices in the U.S. and abroad. Her research focuses on the impact of state and federal language and education policies on language and literacy practices in Spanish and English in schools, homes, and communities across California, the U.S. and internationally. Her work strives to better understand the language and literacy development of emergent bilinguals (i.e., DLLs, ELLs) starting in early childhood and specifically how educational language policies and program models facilitate or undermine language learners’ access to equitable schooling experiences. Her research and teaching also involve multiple international programs that examine equity issues around language policies and teacher education, namely in Mexico, the Republic of Palau, and Switzerland. Dr. Hernandez has worked in public K-12 schools and universities for 20 years and has facilitated trainings for over 1,500 teachers and administrators across the U.S. in the OCDE Project GLAD (Guided Language Acquisition Design) model. She is currently a lead trainer for the California Association for Bilingual Education’s Binational Project GLAD model which works with bilingual educators on both sides of the border to foster and build collaborative binational relationships and better schooling experiences for binational students in the U.S. and Mexico as they become bilingual, biliterate, and bicultural.