On this episode of Highest Aspirations, we take a deep dive into how professional learning can help create and nurture the skillsets and the mindsets educators need to best serve multilingual learners. We challenge the often idealized assumption that “every teacher is a teacher of language” and explore ways to make that a reality rather than a desired state. We also talk about how effective leadership be used as a means to overcome issues teachers are facing like fatigue, burnout, and working in silos. Finally, we highlight some ways schools can leverage partnerships within the community to navigate teacher shortages and build their diverse educator pipeline.

To help us address some of these complicated topics, we brought in Dr. Sarah Schmidt de Carranza. Sarah has been has been an educator in Saint Paul Public Schools since 2003. She achieved National Board Certification in Teaching English as a New Language in 2009, and successfully re-certified in 2019. She joined the Saint Paul Public Schools Office of Multilingual Learning as a supervising administrator in 2019, and has served as the Executive Director of the Office of Multilingual Learning since 2021. 

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