Beyond Crises: Overcoming Linguistic and Cultural Inequities in Communities, Schools and Classrooms

Designing and enacting a whole-school approach to the integration of language, literacy and core content instruction is essential in addressing the plight of Multilingual Learners, particularly in preventing Long-Term ELs. The whole-school approach emphasizes collaborative relationships among district and school administrators, teachers and families through comprehensive professional development that sustains growth and momentum for students and educators. Dr. Calderón will present the framework that has yielded great results as highlighted in the books Beyond Crises: Overcoming Linguistic and Cultural Inequities and Breaking Down the Wall: From Language to Language, Literacy and Content. The five-year evidence-based study on preparing core content, ESL, Dual Language teachers to teach integrated academic language, reading comprehension and academic writing in all subject areas was funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and U.S. Department of Education. The popular hybrid professional development components and follow-up teacher support systems for sustainability and student growth will be presented. Later, Margarita will model, and participants will have opportunities to practice selected strategies in one of the workshops.