Stay ConnectedOn the Highest Aspirations Podcast, we engage in important conversations about the most rapidly growing student demographic in the United States – English Language Learners. We speak with educators and students, researchers and policy makers, and parents and community members about how we can help all students reach their highest aspirations.
Join us on this important journey as we bring the vibrant ELL Community together around the topics that matter most to the students we serve.
What current limitations do we face in our educational system when it comes to data collection about students with limited or interrupted formal education (or SLIFE students)? How can project-based learning and group work help support SLIFE students and their classmates so they can better learn from one another? What are a few steps educators can take to be more equitable and mindful of SLIFE students in instruction and assessments?
We discuss these questions and much more with Orly Klapholz. Orly's expertise includes Special Education and second language acquisition with specialized training in Orton Gillingham curricula. She has extensive experience teaching multilingual students, particularly those with limited or interrupted formal education, and has presented her research at numerous conferences and trainings. In 2021, she co-founded Inlier Learning with Merary Martinez-Cobian, taking a tech-forward approach to creating integrated solutions for the multilingual population.
As is the case with most of our guests, we learned about Orly’s work through a member of our ELL Community. If you have an idea for a topic or guest for a future highest aspirations episode, please feel free to reach out to me at stevens@ellevationeducation.com.
You can find additional resources and episode takeaways on our ELL Community page at ellevationeducation.com/ellcommunity. If you haven’t done so already, we invite you to join our ELL Community while you’re there so you get weekly resources, strategies and tips from that you can use right away.
How can teachers structure one-to-one student conferences to help ELs own their academic growth while also building relationships? What are some innovative ways we can leverage everything from testing data, student work artifacts, and portfolios to help students and teachers set and measure progress towards goals? How can schools make these conferences and learning celebrations more widely practiced and systematic across their classrooms?
We discuss these questions and more with Sarah Said. We first featured Sarah on Highest Aspirations back in 2018, and we are excited to bring her back. Sarah Said is the Director of Language and Equity Programs at the Elgin Math and Science Academy in Elgin IL. Sarah has spent 17 years working with language learners. Currently she is launching the Stand Up Stumps, which is a social justice based public art project in Elgin. Sarah has written various articles in EdWeek Teacher and Confianza and appeared on Highest Aspirations to discuss cultural responsiveness back in 2018.
You can find additional resources and episode takeaways on our ELL Community page at ellevationeducation.com/ellcommunity. If you haven’t done so already, we invite you to join our ELL Community while you’re there so you get weekly resources, strategies and tips from that you can use right away.
What’s in a name, or in this case, a label? Why do many prefer the term “Emergent Bilingual” over other terminology like English learner, LEP, or even multilingual learner? On the 40th anniversary year of the Castañeda v. Pickard Case, what progress have we made and what do we still need to do to ensure the civil rights for our multilingual learners? How might a name/title change lead to significant changes in how we perceive and educate our multilingual learners?
We discuss these questions and much more with Araceli Garcia. Araceli grew up on the South Side of San Antonio and is the daughter and granddaughter of Mexican immigrants. She is the first person in her family to attend college, and her passion for immigrants’ rights stems from seeing her family and community insist on dignity while struggling to navigate their immigration and socioeconomic status. A graduate of Stanford University, Araceli has received several awards for her academic excellence and community service including the John Gardner Fellowship for Public Service, Newman Civic Fellow Award, and Stanford's Porras Award for Visionary Leadership. Most recently, Araceli served as an inaugural Education Policy Fellow with IDRA, where she focused on rights of emergent bilingual (English learner) and immigrant students. Araceli graduated from Stanford with a bachelor’s degree in Chicanx/Latinx Studies and a minor in education. Currently, she is pursuing a law degree at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, where she was named an Equal Justice Scholar and plans to continue serving low-income and racially marginalized communities.
You can find additional resources and episode takeaways on our ELL Community page at ellevationeducation.com/ellcommunity. If you haven’t done so already, we invite you to join our ELL Community while you’re there so you get weekly resources, strategies and tips from that you can use right away.
What are some ways mindfulness activities can help multilingual students succeed and how can teachers get started using them successfully? How can educators proactively elevate the voices of their students while decreasing teacher talk time? How can we apply concepts from exercise and other training programs to academic language instruction?
We discuss these questions and more in Part 2 of a two-part series with Gina (Lahpay) Lappe and Kent Dwyer. One key to their success has been intentional and sustained collaboration - which as many of us have experienced, can be more difficult than it seems. we’ll get into how they went about creating systems that made it easier for them and their colleagues to work together to support all learners.
Gina Lappe is heading into her 10th year teaching inquiry-based science. She started teaching in Great Smoky Mountains National Park before heading into the classroom at an Expeditionary Learning Charter School in North Carolina. She currently teaches middle school science at an international school in South Korea. She is passionate about using science as a pathway to get students curious about and connected with the world around them. Please feel free to reach out to Gina via email at ginalappe@gmail.com and Instagram @Lappe_labs.
Kent Dwyer has been an educator for 17 years, focusing primarily on language acquisition. He taught Spanish in Pennsylvania for 11 years, serving as a demonstration teacher at Julia Reynolds Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School and then as a master teacher at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School. From 2016 to 2021, Kent worked in international education to support English language acquisition, first in Qatar and then in South Korea. Kent has facilitated professional development sessions on topics including digital storytelling for language acquisition, tiered units of instruction, differentiated instruction, interpersonal language use within the classroom, data-driven decision making, integrated performance assessments, and the use of technology to promote communication.
He can be reached through his professional instagram at kent.dwyer or via email at kentdwyer13@gmail.com.
Here is a link to their Edutopia article.
Here is a link to Choice Words.
Here is a link to Fluency through TPR Storytelling.
You can find additional resources and episode takeaways on our ELL Community page at ellevationeducation.com/ellcommunity. If you haven’t done so already, we invite you to join our ELL Community while you’re there so you get weekly resources, strategies and tips from that you can use right away.
What are some easy ways that content teachers and ELL specialists can collaborate to better support their multilingual learners? How can schools and teaching teams build out systems for housing key instructional resources to support practices like scaffolding? What can educators do to ensure multilingual learners have equitable access to high-quality instructional materials and content - particularly in STEM courses?
We discuss these questions and more in Part 1 of a two-part series with Gina (Lahpay) Lappe and Kent Dwyer. One key to their success has been intentional and sustained collaboration - which as many of us have experienced, can be more difficult than it seems. we’ll get into how they went about creating systems that made it easier for them and their colleagues to work together to support all learners.
Gina Lappe is heading into her 10th year teaching inquiry-based science. She started teaching in Great Smoky Mountains National Park before heading into the classroom at an Expeditionary Learning Charter School in North Carolina. She currently teaches middle school science at an international school in South Korea. She is passionate about using science as a pathway to get students curious about and connected with the world around them. Please feel free to reach out to Gina via email at ginalappe@gmail.com and Instagram @Lappe_labs.
Kent Dwyer has been an educator for 17 years, focusing primarily on language acquisition. He taught Spanish in Pennsylvania for 11 years, serving as a demonstration teacher at Julia Reynolds Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School and then as a master teacher at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School. From 2016 to 2021, Kent worked in international education to support English language acquisition, first in Qatar and then in South Korea. Kent has facilitated professional development sessions on topics including digital storytelling for language acquisition, tiered units of instruction, differentiated instruction, interpersonal language use within the classroom, data-driven decision making, integrated performance assessments, and the use of technology to promote communication.
He can be reached through his professional instagram at kent.dwyer or via email at kentdwyer13@gmail.com.
Here is a link to their Edutopia article.
Here is a link to Choice Words.
Here is a link to Fluency through TPR Storytelling.
You can find additional resources and episode takeaways on our ELL Community page at ellevationeducation.com/ellcommunity. If you haven’t done so already, we invite you to join our ELL Community while you’re there so you get weekly resources, strategies and tips from that you can use right away.
What are some steps that educators can take now to build positive relationships with students and their families this school year? What experiences can educators pull from to build empathy and appreciation for multilingual students and their families? How might we go beyond language so we can also build an understanding of diverse cultures, and how might that investment play out in interactions with families?
We discuss these questions and more with Rosalie Metro, an Assistant Teaching Professor in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Rose has taught social studies at the high school level, and currently teaches TESOL classes for pre-service teachers as well as supervising student teaching interns. Metro is the author of two books, Teaching US History Thematically: Document-Based Lessons for the Secondary Classroom, and Teaching World History Thematically: Essential Questions and Document-based Lessons to Connect Past and Present, both published by Teachers College Press. Metro has also been researching Burma/Myanmar’s education system and working with refugees from that country since 2001, and does Burmese language interpreting for her local school district.
You can find additional resources and episode takeaways on our ELL Community page at ellevationeducation.com/ellcommunity. If you haven’t done so already, we invite you to join our ELL Community while you’re there so you get weekly resources, strategies and tips from that you can use right away.
Why are content-specific and intentional language supports so critical for effective instruction of multilingual learners? How can we advocate for multilingual learner perspectives to be included in key processes regarding curriculum and instruction at school, district and state level? What role do professional development and formative assessment play in the effectiveness of high-quality instructional material? We discuss these questions and much more with Crystal Gonzales, Executive Director of the English Learner Success Forum, or ELSF.
At ELSF, Crystal collaborates with national experts, organizations, educators and content developers to increase the supply of quality K-12 instructional materials that meet the needs of the growing EL population. Previously, as a program officer at the Helmsley Charitable Trust, she collaborated with national K-12 organizations with a focus on teacher professional development, quality instructional materials, and advocacy for underserved communities. In this role, she worked with EL experts to elevate the needs of ELs among grantees and her grantmaking peers. Crystal began her career as a 4th grade bilingual teacher in Houston ISD. She is currently a member of Education Leaders of Color, Latinos for Education, and is a Pahara NextGen fellow. Crystal holds a master’s in Social Service Administration from the University of Chicago and a B.A. from the University of New Mexico. She is a proud native New Mexican and currently resides in NYC.
You can find additional resources and episode takeaways on our ELL Community page at ellevationeducation.com/ellcommunity. If you haven’t done so already, we invite you to join our ELL Community while you’re there so you get weekly resources, strategies and tips from that you can use right away.
How might we seize the opportunity of a new school year as a chance to gather information on their multilingual learners, specifically the learning they may have done in languages other than English? How can teachers who aren’t comfortable speaking languages other than English facilitate and support their students’ learning in their home languages? What techniques can educators use to provide feedback to their students in the most meaningful and supportive way?
We discuss these questions and more in these questions in Part 2 of our 2 part series with Dr. Margo Gottlieb, author of the new book “Classroom Assessment in Multiple Languages” and co-founder and lead developer for WIDA at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison. For Margo’s full bio and a blog post with takeaways from our two part series, visit ellevationeducation.com/ellcommunity.
You can find additional resources and episode takeaways on our ELL Community page at ellevationeducation.com/ellcommunity. If you haven’t done so already, we invite you to join our ELL Community while you’re there so you get weekly resources, strategies and tips from that you can use right away.
How might new approaches to assessment create more equitable opportunities for multilingual learners? In what ways could local and professional accountability help motivate teachers to encourage students’ home language use? Why is it so important that relationships and a deeper understanding of our students be at the center of how we design and analyze assessments?
We discuss these questions and more in these questions in Part 1 of our 2 part series with Dr. Margo Gottlieb, co-founder and lead developer for WIDA at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Starting her career as an elementary school teacher and bilingual coordinator, she served as the longstanding director of assessment and evaluation at the Illinois Resource Center. In addition, she has been a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Santiago, Chile and has keynoted, presented, and consulted in over 21 countries and almost every state in the U.S. In recent years, Margo’s scholarship has focused on designing language development standards frameworks, co-constructing linguistically and culturally sustainable curriculum, promoting student agency through assessment as, for, and of learning, and evaluating language education policy in K-12 settings.
Over her career, Dr. Gottlieb has published more than 90 articles, monographs, handbooks/ guides, encyclopedia entries, and chapters as well as authored, co-authored, or co-edited over 30 books on language standards, academic language use, and classroom assessment. As everyone, the worldwide pandemic forced her to pivot; as a result, she has actively participated in podcasts, webinars, blogs, and has even learned how to tweet. Besides co-authoring Beyond Crises with Debbie Zacarian and Margarita Calderón, Margo’s most recent books include Assessment in Multiple Languages: A Handbook for School and District Leaders and its companion, Classroom Assessment in Multiple Languages: A Handbook for Teachers (Corwin, 2021). Throughout her educational career Margo has been a staunch advocate and warrior for multilingual learners. You are welcome to contact her at margogottlieb@gmail.com or @margogottlieb.
You can find additional resources and episode takeaways on our ELL Community page at ellevationeducation.com/ellcommunity. If you haven’t done so already, we invite you to join our ELL Community while you’re there so you get weekly resources, strategies and tips from that you can use right away.
Welcome back to Highest Aspirations, an education podcast that focuses on how we can help maximize impact on multilingual learners.
If you’d like to join us on the podcast or if you have an idea for a topic or guest, we want to hear from you. Take less than a minute to fill out our form at bit.ly/haptopics.
As always, if you’re looking for great resources and ideas to help support multilingual learners, subscribe to Highest Aspirations wherever you get your podcasts. If you have feedback, please consider leaving us a review on whichever platform you are using to listen.
You can find more free resources such as podcast episode highlights, blog posts, and more at ellevationeducation.com/ellcommunity. You can join the community there to get a weekly email with fresh content you can use and share with others.
We’ll be coming to you with new episodes every Tuesday from now until the end of the year. In the meantime, good luck preparing for the new school year - it is certainly an exciting time to be an educator!
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