A very special thanks to I’m Your Neighbor Books for making these texts available for review. Looking for ways to incorporate diverse books into your library or classroom programming? Visit https://imyourneighborbooks.org/ for valuable tools, resources, projects, and book searches. While you’re there, be sure to check out The Welcoming Library, a pop-up community conversation on immigration. Title: Wishes by Mu’o’n Thi Van & Victo Ngai Empathy is a pillar of social-emotional learning.  And it’s more important now than at any other time in our collective history.  Wishes, by Mu ..read more

I absolutely love this idea of a visual orientation handbook, shared with me by Silvia Tamminen, coordinator at the Aurora Public Schools (APS) Welcome Center in the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado.   The Aurora Public Schools (APS) Welcome Center supports one of the most diverse student populations in the country.  This demographic includes a large number of folks resettled refugee status.  The district is now home to students from all over the world, with especially robust cultural representation from Bhutan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Myanmar ..read more

The Home Language Survey (HLS), also called a Heritage Language Survey or Home Language Questionnaire (HLQ),  is used in the initial process of identifying a student’s potential eligibility for English language support services.   A heritage language survey usually takes the form of a brief questionnaire, which may be administered in English print, preferred language print, orally, or through a translator.  The purpose of the survey is to establish an understanding of a student’s language-learning background.           &nbs ..read more

“If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you are doing.” These are the words of American engineer and statistician W. Edwards Deming. I often carry them with me into my work as an educational practitioner.  When it comes to enrolling potential multilingual learners (and determining who might qualify for English-specific support services), a clear process is critical. After all, clarity and consistency create calm. Not to mention, they help ensure that we’re achieving legal compliance.  Intake protocol will vary by district, and sometimes by schoo ..read more

The most common question on deck these days: How do I go about minimizing student trauma in the virtual setting? Of course, this is a loaded question. So let’s start by laying a foundation.  Here are the most practical ways to get started (or to boost your existing trauma-informed practice). Reframe the conversation: Mitigating trauma isn't about fixing broken things. It's about restoring power. The distinction is critical. This power belongs to our students, and they’ve owned it all along. Sometimes it gets interrupted. We can see ourselves as technicians, trained to employ tools tha ..read more

Language is powerful. When the life work that we’re in has everything to do with language learning, words carry even more weight and significance.  To compound this, “language learner” very often overlaps with “culturally diverse”. Diversity deals with identity- another area where words resonate with a particular impact.  And we’re long overdue for a makeover in the way that we use words to label, define, and describe the language learner. Early on in my career as a Newcomer teacher (some 15 years ago) cultural and linguistic student diversity wasn’t viewed from an asset lens- at le ..read more

Ramadan Mubarak! We’re in the season of Ramadan, which this year lasts from April to June.  This is the time of year when many Muslims fast (or abstain from food, drink, ) from sunrise to sunset. It’s a time of both daily sacrifice and celebration, which culminates in Eid, a several-day festival of food, gifts, and togetherness.  What is the Purpose of Ramadan? Ramadan is an Islamic holiday, Islam, directly translated, means “peace”.  Ramadan, which occurs during the ninth month of the lunar calendar, is a reflection of this. It is a period of introspection, prayer, self-improv ..read more

Ramadan Mubarak! We’re in the season of Ramadan, which this year lasts from April to June.  This is the time of year when many Muslims fast (or abstain from food, drink, ) from sunrise to sunset. It’s a time of both daily sacrifice and celebration, which culminates in Eid, a several-day festival of food, gifts, and togetherness.  What is the Purpose of Ramadan? Ramadan is an Islamic holiday, Islam, directly translated, means “peace”.  Ramadan, which occurs during the ninth month of the lunar calendar, is a reflection of this. It is a period of introspection, prayer, self-improv ..read more

Let’s look to tools and strategies that facilitate re-directive capacities and champion long-term moves toward resiliency.  We’ll spend a bit of extra time focused on our Recent Arriver Emergent Lingual (RAEL) students.   In this space, we’ll highlight EL parents and families as critical stakeholders in students’ trauma restoration processes. Trauma-informed pedagogy relies upon, in part, the explicit teaching and modeling of regulatory and prosocial behaviors.  Eventually, these strategies can be holistically embedded into children’s everyday school (and life) experiences.&nbs ..read more

There is so much grief.  Heartbreak over the fact that this conversation is still necessary.  That black and brown folx are still under occupation. That education is still censored to fit the mold of a racist status quo. That we still have so much work to do. This is the tragic legacy of education. We wait to pursue authentic change until the ish hits the fan.  We’re a reactive institution, not a proactive one. In fact, we’ve taken a reactive approach across other uncomfortable and inconvenient paths, too (think: Emergent Lingual education, immigrant parent engagement, trauma-i ..read more