When I invited Natalia Heckman and Stephanie Ledger to sit down with me at the roundtable to talk about supporting and developing secondary multilingual writers I had an idea that the conversation would be informative, but I didn’t realize how deep we would actually go and just how delightful it would be. I took pages of notes!

The fact is that we didn’t even get to all of the questions I had planned. These ladies talked about humanizing instruction for multilingual learners in secondary schools. They discussed authentic and compelling ways to bring out the best in our writers. They shared how background and culture are factors in writing. And much more.

At the time of this recording, Natalia Heckman’s book Building Better Writers was yet to be released. To learn more about Natalia and her work, click here.

 She also shares her experiences and her strategies on her blog.

Natalia on Twitter.

We were overjoyed that Stephanie Ledger joined us from Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Her research and experience with MLs and SLIFE across all age levels and proficiency levels is phenomenal.

Stephanie Ledger is an ESL/ELD educator, researcher and author. She is passionate about co-creating equitable assessment and learning opportunities for multilingual learners (MLLs). She has spent over thirty years collaborating with elementary, secondary and adult multilingual learners and their teachers. Her research and practice focus on early literacy education for adolescent students of refugee background with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE). Stephanie has a Master of Education degree from Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo, Ontario) and would like to gratefully recognize her advisor, Dr. Kristiina Montero, for her collaboration as a co-author.

Stephanie on Twitter.

Stephanie’s publications are:

Transforming ESL Pedagogies: A Teacher’s Journey from Subject-Centered to Student-Centered Pedagogy When Teaching Print Literacy to SLIFE. (pp. 141-159).  https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-86963-2_9

Teacher Profile in Chapter 2: Social and emotional learning in pre- and in-service TESOL teacher preparation programs, In L.J. L. J. Pentón Herrera (Ed.), Social-emotional learning in the English language classroom: Fostering growth, self-care, and independence.  https://www.amazon.ca/Social-Emotional-Learning-English-Language-Classroom/dp/1953745024

Shifting pedagogy for adolescent refugees with limited or interrupted formal education: https://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3090&context=etd

Exploring early reading instructional strategies to advance the print literacy development of adolescent SLIFE. 58(1), pp.59-69. https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jaal.318

Other Resources Mentioned in the Podcast Episode:

The Writing Revolution by Hockman & Wexler

Building Literacy with Engish Language Learners: Insights from Linguistics by Lems, Miller, & Soro

Teaching MLs Podcast by Tan Huynh 

The Motivated Classroom Podcast by Dr. Liam Printer