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Welcome to the modern classrooms project podcast. Each week, we bring you discussions with educators on how they use blended, self paced and mastery based learning to better serve their students. We believe teachers learn best from each other. So this is our way of lifting up the voices of leaders and innovators in our community. This is the modern classrooms project podcast.

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Hello, and welcome to episode 126 of the Modern Classrooms project podcast. My name is Toni Rose Deanon, she/they pronouns, Community Engagement Manager here at Modern Classroom, and I am joined by Rebecca Castellanos, she/her pronouns, who is the Director of Content Developer engagements at English Learner Success Forum. In her role, she creates the system structures and resources to partner with content developers in order to improve curriculum and instructional materials for multilingual learners. Welcome, Rebecca. Thank you. It's so lovely to be here with your community. And thank you for having me. Yeah, it's so exciting to be in this space with you. And thank you so much for saying yes to the podcast. So before we get started, what is bringing you joy lately?

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Oh, I think one thing that is bringing me joy lately is

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just waking up, my husband and I have decided to wake up at least 15 minutes earlier than our kids do. And so we get our caffeine ready. And we just sit on the couch and just take a moment to connect and start the day before it's time to wake up and wake up our kids and like rush around and get everyone ready. And it's just been like really lovely to connect in that way and just

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take the time to have a slower morning routine.

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Oh, it's like the calm before the storm. Right? Exactly, exactly. And then we're like, oh, okay, are calm before the storm is over time Time to wake up the kids. Yeah, I can't imagine how peaceful and relaxing that is to start your morning off like that, I really, I really liked that. I know, I definitely hold on to my morning routines. It's where I write and then I drink my hot tea. And I feed my dogs and kind of hang out before like that getting the day started. So I really, I really love that. Thanks for voicing that. And I'm really glad that that's bringing you joy lately. So tell us more about who you are and how you got into the work that you're doing now.

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So I started out my career in education as an upper elementary bilingual teacher. So all of my students were my multilingual learners. And my classroom was their first exposure to content instruction, English. So I became fascinated with how to support them in accessing the content and, and in developing their language skills in English. So all of my students were Spanish speakers, and they had a lot of very strong literacy skills in in Spanish. And so really being able to transfer what they know, from Spanish to English was really critical for me, and for my students. And just working with the students was just really the launching point for my career. And later, I moved into a central office position where I supported bilingual programming and instruction for Denver Public Schools. And then during the pandemic, I really wanted to make a shift. So I took some time off, to really think about, well, first of all, to be with my family to be with my kids. My daughter was a kindergartener, so you can imagine how well that was going with her on, on Zoom. So I just took some time off to be with my kids and think about my next steps and what I wanted to do. And during that time, I started consulting with English learners success forum, and I, you know, I was really enjoying my time there, and then a position opened up, and it felt like the right fit, I was really excited about the position and the work that the organization was doing. And so I decided to go back to work full time. I love that so much. And I also really liked the shift from like bilingual students to multilingual students, because, you know, we can never, we're not really sure how many languages are being spoken at home, but I really liked the inclusivity of that shift with language with language learning, right?

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Well, that's really exciting. And you're still in Denver, right? Yes, I am. Nice. I love that little journey. And that's that's so great. I love

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Like being able to find something that just like fits really well, right? Yes.

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Okay, well, I'm sure listeners are probably wondering what is English learners success forum. So tell us more about that.

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So English learners success Forum is a nonprofit that is focused on increasing the supply of high quality instructional material materials for multilingual learners. So, basically, outcomes for multilingual learners have not improved for 20 years. And we know that many of the instructional materials on the market are failing our students.

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And so LSF partners with content developers wanting to improve their materials. So we do a number of things. Sometimes we do curriculum reviews, where we review actual lessons. And then we provide strengths and areas for growth. Sometimes we do more strategic planning and design work with content developers so that they can really better understand how to how to design with multilingual learners in mind. And then on the flip side, we also work with states and districts around selecting curriculum materials that center multilingual learners. So our mission is really focused on materials and working with publishers and viewing that as a key lever lever for increasing outcomes for multilingual students. Yeah, and that's definitely something that we had been missing. I know that I taught a lot of multilingual students, and I was also multilingual myself. And there was just such a lack of disconnect, right? Well, there's a disconnect, and just a lack of understanding and knowledge of how to better serve students who speak more than one language. There's also a lot of like assumptions that happened, you know, so I grew up in the Philippines born in the Philippines. And so our second language is,

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our second language is English. And so there were a lot of the times where, like, our educators had no idea, like our teachers had no idea how to even, there's just a lot of assumptions that like we didn't speak the language didn't know how to speak the language or like, didn't know how to communicate or anything like that our pronunciation was a little bit off. And like, I never saw myself in the curriculum, as well as like, there was just never any strategies to really elevate the fact that I spoke more than one language and, and that was kind of hard growing up as a kid, you know, I always saw that as like a dang, I really need to just speak English. That's how I'm going to fit in. That's how I'm going to be elevated. That's how I'm going to be acknowledged. But I really I appreciate this. And I was really grateful to have Matt crystal as well, who's the executive director of ELS F. And so I was like, oh, man, as soon as I found out what she did, I was like, we have to get you on the podcast, because we have a lot of educators here who teach multilingual students and just have like, not want to say no idea, but definitely needs a lot of support on how to better serve our multilingual students. I really liked that your organization is doing the work of creating instructional materials that make it more accessible and more strategic and also just to be more supportive for our multilingual students. And so we know that educators are really trying their best, right, especially with COVID, that's happening. Still, the pandemic is happening, which is wild to me, and also want more support and direction when it comes to teaching English learners. And so you've had, you've had some experience with this as well teaching an upper elementary. So how can an educator make a curriculum more accessible for English learners? And what if like an educator has a rigid curriculum? How can they go about creating pathways for our students to be successful? Yeah, I think this is a really great question. And I appreciate you sharing your story. And I think that is the exact opposite of what we want to create for English learners. We want

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multilingual learners to feel like their languages and their cultures are valid and important for the learning and that they enrich our classroom environment. And so one thing that I think educators can consider is when approaching a lesson is really thinking through both the language and the content demands. So educators are really, you know, familiar with planning, with content in mind, like what are the goals? What do we want students to learn? And with multilingual learners, and really all students, you know, students aren't born, learning how to speak

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using, you know, high level math language. This is a language that we learn over time through exposure. And so we need to think through what are the language demands of the lesson

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How can we make English the language of the lesson more accessible?

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So really thinking about both the access and how students might express their learning. So in terms of access, I think there are a lot of strategies that many of us are familiar with, like using strong visuals. And sometimes that gets mentioned as sort of a pat answer like, oh, yeah, just use visuals. But visuals are really powerful for for language learners. And just adding visuals to the to support the learning is really important. And chunking the content, so really allowing students to stop and process with a peer, either in English or in their home language when that's possible. So if there are two students who speak Chinese or Spanish, really pairing them up, not so that one student translates for the other, but so that they can make meaning together. And those are I mean, those are just two really strong ways to support access, there's so many other strategies. And then on the flipside, like thinking about how how we want students to express their learning. So what kind of language supports might they need,

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you know, word walls, or word banks or sentence frames, can give students a little bit more access to accessibility and expressing their learning. And also allowing students to express their learning in their home language that's really important and validating. And even, you know, if you think about writing, and if,

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you know, many of us have the experience of learning another language, I know that when I write in Spanish, I always need to write in English first, because if I can't, if I don't know what my ideas are, I at least need to get them out in my stronger language. So providing space for students to do that as well, like if they want to write or share an idea in their home language first, and, and use that as a launching pad for how they want to express their learning in English can be really important. And I think these types of examples can work well with any type of curriculum, because they don't really, they don't require you to do a massive revision, it's more like adding on accessibility and support.

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So Rebecca, I have two follow up questions for you just to kind of give our listeners a little bit more detail. When you say strong visuals. What do you mean by that? Oh, that's a good question. I think what I mean by strong visuals is visuals that support comprehension. So I think sometimes we

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see visuals being used, and they're cute, and they are.

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Yeah, they're, they're nice visuals, or they're,

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they look nice. But what are the visuals that are necessary for supporting comprehension?

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And so really asking ourselves, does this visual? Does it support comprehension? Or is it just like a cute visual that I'm throwing in there to make my slides look nicer, which, you know, we always, like making your slides look pretty, or your, your content look pretty, there's nothing wrong with that. But there's a difference between that and really selecting visuals that are supporting comprehension. And you know, even with vocabulary words, sometimes we spend a lot of time explaining vocabulary when a quick picture is actually sufficient, and more effective than a long explanation. And I liked that you pointed that out too. Because, you know, here modern classroom, we do blended learning. So our educators create instructional videos, and something that I talk to my mentees about all the time is that when you create or when you provide visuals in your, in your slideshow, so that you can have it in your video, make sure that it's meaningful. And there's a lot of intention behind it. As much as I love the GIFs, right, those can be really distracting. And I feel like sometimes our attention goes directly to those GIFs and it has like absolutely nothing to do with the content that you're trying to teach. And so it's great to have fun with it. It's great to, you know, make it cute all of that but also just keeping in mind too that

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visuals definitely have to be meaningful and intentional and doesn't cause a lot of distraction. And I think

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That's an unpopular opinion.

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You know, because we see all of these like beautiful slides, these beautiful things that are put together. But honestly, simplicity is like the best way to keep it to make it more accessible for all learners and not just for multilingual learners. Yeah, I agree. And, you know, I think GIFs and more of those fun types of visuals, I put them in the category of maybe relationship building, and,

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and not really content, you know, making meaning with the content. But you're right, that, you know, students who are newer to English, their language demands are so are so much heavier. And so they're there, their head, they have a language demand and a content demand, and they're constantly trying to make meaning. And sometimes, you're right, that those things can distract from the meaning that they're that is more important for them to be making at the moment. So okay, well, Rebecca, you know, one educator stated that the accommodations for multilingual learners are often an afterthought, rather than something to keep in mind as instructional materials are being built. And I believe that for the majority of the accessibility features, like you said before, slash guidelines that we have an education, how can we ensure that language learning is integrated in our instructional materials. So this is really the heart of the work that we do at LSF. And our goal is to work with content developers at the very beginning stages of their development, so that the supports aren't simply something they tack on at the end. And then on the teacher level, I think it really goes back to planning, learning, thinking about both the language and the content goals in mind, and really getting in the practice of thinking through both of those lens, especially when you have a text that you're putting in front of students or a task, and really looking at that text or task with a critical lens, and thinking about what is the language that my students are going to need to really understand, and what is the language that students are going to need to use to express their learning. And then I also think that

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in terms of truly supporting multilingual learners without just kind of it being an add on is centering social interaction, in, in, in the learning environment. So social interaction, we know is critical to learning in general, but it's also absolutely critical to language learning. So that's how students develop language, and they build ideas. And they, they learn that, oh, I need to, I need to refine how I'm communicating this idea, because my peers don't seem to understand what I'm saying. And so that social interaction is just really important for language development, and explicitly teaching the conversation skills needed to have a productive conversation. And going beyond the ping pong, where one person shares an idea, another person shares an idea and the conversation is over. So really helping students learn how to build a back and forth conversation, where they're making meaning together and building knowledge. And this is where they're driving, they're learning. And it creates that sense of autonomy, like they are really taking ownership of their learning, while they are developing language skills with their peers. And honestly, everything that you just stated, these are all accessibility features, and you know, just accessibility for all learners, right, like being able to have that social interaction, because schooling is all about social interactions. And I always say to, if we can talk about the content or the skill or the topic that we're learning, then that means that we're we're learning it right, if we're able to teach someone else. So there's a lot of interactions that's happening there. And I really liked that you voiced that there's autonomy now, right? That, you know, we, our students are able to have those conversations. And another thing too, is just the fact that like, I feel like educators really have to explicitly model what their expectations are. And that's for any skill that they want their student to know. Right. And so

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I really appreciate that the piece of like social interactions and how important it is. Something that we always talk about in our organization is that when you walk into a modern classroom, it's very much chaotic, but it's an organized chaos where people are, you know, our students are just having lots of conversations about what's happening, what they're learning, and I really, I really appreciate that

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part about our model. Another thing, Rebecca, you know, I think this may be just me projecting, but I know that sometimes there's some hesitancy or maybe a little bit of fear and anxiety of when you have students who speak so many different other languages. So it's not just majority Spanish speakers is not just majority, French speakers or whatever it may be, right? And there's like a really good mix of students speaking a lot of different languages. How can we help teachers to just kind of like, take a breather, it's okay that you don't know their language, you can still serve the student the best way that you can, how can we alleviate that like stress and fear of like, oh, my gosh, but I don't know how to communicate with this student.

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So I get that it is really intimidating to teach students that don't, that speak a language that we don't understand. And I think that students also pick up on

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just a sense of belonging in the classroom and our jobs as educators is to, is to create a sense of belonging. And I think,

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even when we feel like we can't communicate effectively with students, because maybe they don't,

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they're there, they're just developing in their understanding of English, like, a smile, and encouragement can go a long way. And even even allowing a student to share in Arabic. And you may not, you may not understand Arabic at all, but even just saying something to the effect of, you know, thank you so much for sharing and contributing to our conversation. I love hearing other languages and,

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and just kind of leaving it at that for now. And that builds a foundation for the student to feel comfortable. So that when they do start taking more risks in English, that they're willing to do that, and just building on that sense of belonging, and that idea that all students have so much to contribute. And even if we don't always understand what they're saying, we can still create that sense of belonging. You know, I have to say that that's actually something that is so tangible, right? Something that we all can do regardless. And I think that acknowledging the feeling of discomfort, and acknowledging the feeling of overwhelmingness. And just all of these feelings, those are, okay, like, I know that I taught adult ESL when I was in DC, and I had students from all over I mean, I had a student who was Russian, I had another one had a good amount of students from Ethiopia. And so there was just a lot of different languages that were happening in the classroom. And I know that in the beginning, I was really overwhelmed. Like, oh, my gosh, how do I, how do I have conversations,

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but then I quickly realized, like, they do want to talk to you, right? Like, our students want to talk to us, and we will do whatever we can to have those conversations. And so for me, it was a lot of movement. And, you know, for me, it was a lot of pictures as well.

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And like you said, it was just very much like that warm sense of belonging, like it's okay, if you don't know a word in English, we're gonna figure it out together. Because I don't know a word in America or in Russia, and like, I don't know those languages. So we're gonna continue to learn from each other. But I really liked that because I think also, you know, individuals, human beings, not just our multilingual learners, but every human being consents, the discomfort consents, that fear consent, that hesitation, and so that makes everybody in that environment a little bit more uncomfortable, and not really knowing how to engage or move forward. And so I think, sit with your discomfort, right, acknowledge the fact that there are probably five to six to eight to 10 languages that are being spoken in your classroom, and you have no idea how to communicate efficiently and effectively. And there may be some times that's really frustrating. And that's okay. But I think just continuing to just show that you care.

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And show that you're curious and that you want to learn. I always told my students teach me

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What's this word and this language, because I don't know. And I'm teaching you English, you're gonna teach me something, and your language, and it was really great to have that kind of learning happening. And so I think just like being able to relinquish that control of like, I have to be, you know, the only person that I mean, like, my students have to understand me all the time. And it's like, no, that's not really the case. And so

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the sense of belonging that is really, really beautiful, Rebecca, thank you for the reminder. And so, you know, like you said, In the beginning, I just, I also just learned

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And and I'm not surprised that the achievement gap for multilingual learners has not changed in the last 20 years. And so I completely agree that we cannot keep doing the same things we've done before. And so here at modern classroom, we focus on a more innovative and student centered way of teaching and learning because we know that the traditional way has not been working for many, many years. So what are one to two things that educators should know about multilingual learners that most people don't know about? Or forget to think about?

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Yeah, I think it goes back to a lot of the themes that we have been talking about, which is that multilingual learners come with a large fund of knowledge and assets. And oftentimes, we approach multilingual learners as like two monolingual speakers in one where they're an English speaker, and then they're the Speaker of the other languages that they may speak, when that even their cultural identities are a little bit separate. And we keep that separate from the classroom. And that's really doing a disservice to students because and into the classroom community, honestly, because our multilingual learners have a huge repertoire of resources, and they're shared across their cultures, they're shared across their languages. And, you know, the languages that they speak, are constantly influencing and building off of each other. So I mentioned earlier that my students, you know, I was lucky in my situation where my students had the opportunity to learn how to read and write in their home language. And I know that's not the case for everyone.

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But they had strong literacy skills in Spanish, and and to not bring that into the classroom and to treat them treat their English as separate is really not allowing them to capitalize on all the resources that we have. So we can think about multilingual learners as a whole. And that, again, that they have this huge reservoir of the languages that they speak and their different lived experiences and thinking about how do we capitalize on that? How do we bring that into the classroom,

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and make sure that students feel that all of that is valid and useful for their learning, and is a way that the classroom environment in the classroom community is enrich, enrich? So that can look like that, again, like we've talked about many times, like validating the use of home language, bringing that into the classroom, and like your example of having students teach you

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teach you little bits of their language like that, is just, we want students to feel like they're bringing their whole selves into the classroom. And, and even having students compare and contrast how their languages are similar and different.

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can be really valuable, even when we don't we don't speak that language. So just posing the question, especially to older learners, like, how do adjectives work? How to describing words work in your language? You know, do you recognize any cognates or words that sound similar in your language, in your home language, and really help them to tap into what they know, in both their home languages and, and in English, and recognizing that,

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that those things build off of each other and are so useful for the classroom and for their learning? Yeah, and I again, thank you so much for pointing that out. Something that I really appreciate, appreciate about our multilingual community is that they may not speak a common language or they're learning English at the same time, but they will definitely still find ways to communicate with each other, even if one is speaking in Vietnamese, and the other one is speaking in Arabic, right. And so but they find ways to, to have those conversations. And I find that to be so so, so cool and fascinating. And I think that, you know, as we continue moving forward with working with multilingual learners, just again, having that sense of curiosity, and admiration of our students who are learning multiple languages, and like really, finding like, I just really loved observing my students because they really just found a way to connect with each other. And I think that we as educators, we can also find ways to connect with our students who are so vastly different than us.

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Okay, so listeners, we're going to take a quick break for an announcement and we come back we'll talk a little bit more about Rebecca's experiences and expertise.

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Hey, listeners, it's Tony rose here with an announcement when we have additional seats available for our virtual

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Well a mentorship program we always pull educators from our waitlist first. If you've always wanted to join the virtual mentorship program but couldn't get funding join our waitlist at modern classrooms.org/waitlist.

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Right, and now we're back with Rebecca. So ALSF provides amazing resources, right to strategies, how to guides do's and don'ts and exemplar lessons, how can educators use these resources. So while our work and resources are really geared towards publishers, or content developers, many of them are very applicable at the classroom level. So our go to Resources are really our guidelines. And we have guidelines for math, science, and English language arts. And these guidelines are really around how a curriculum can best support multilingual learners. But at the classroom level, these tools can be used by teachers to take a critical lens around the curriculum that they're using, like, maybe there are things that are working really well, and that the curriculum, you know, has a lot of strengths. And then the guidelines can also pinpoint ways that there there may be gaps. And there's general buckets around you know, at utilizing students assets,

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and planning for language in mind. And so teachers can use the guidelines to really plan for how, how they want to best support multilingual learners. And then the exemplar lessons. And some of the other resources that you mentioned, like do's and don'ts are also helpful, because they take the guidelines and make them like maybe one step more concrete. So it helps really illustrate what the strategies might look like in an actual lesson. Yeah, and something that I really like about this, too, is the fact that, you know, as educators, we while we all know, educators create a lot of their content, right, even if they do have some kind of curriculum, they're still able to kind of finesse and try and create a, a curriculum that is a lot more relevant and relatable for their students. And so this is like a really great source of resources that I found, because I was like, Oh, my gosh, like, I know that I was, you know, creating stuff in my classroom. So having these resources, the guides, and just the kind of strategies would have definitely helped me out a lot while I was

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while I was teaching. And so I just really wanted to pinpoint that. And we'll definitely put that in the show notes below as well. And so, I know, we've mentioned a little bit about some of the things that that educators can do for their curriculum, but let's just kind of reiterate that, right. So what are some bite sized actionable steps for educators to integrate language acquisition in their curriculum? So let's say, you know, this educator doesn't have a lot of time, which that's all educators.

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They don't really have you know, they, they don't have the time to take a deep dive into the curriculum, because again, it's February, they're already going at it right. So what would be something that they can kind of pause and just start implementing in their classrooms? Maybe tomorrow or the next class?

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Yeah, I think, I think that's such an important question, especially just the lack of time that educators have. So I think one of the easiest, and also the most important is,

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is, is student talk. So really giving times time for students to make sense of what they're learning. And I love. I love strategies for student talk, because they can be as small as a turn and talk. And it doesn't. It's great if you have time to pre plan that and really make it intentional. But you can also use it in the moment when you see that students are maybe having that restless look, or a confused look and giving them that space to turn and share with a partner.

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And starting small is really important. I think sometimes, while there are a lot of great student talk structures, and some of them are very, very involved. And I think I think we can get caught up in having these fancy, very involved structures and and they're great. But if we don't start small, those big, those bigger, more complex strategies can often fail. So giving giving ourselves permission to start with simple turning talks, teaching students how to interact in partners.

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and to truly share their ideas and keep building from there. And I cannot overemphasize the importance of modeling. So the teacher actually modeling what a productive conversation looks like, and also providing students

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both prompts and sentence starters to help them enter in those conversations. And it doesn't need to be a whole list of them, it can, again, starting small. So if you really want students to connect and build on what, what their peers are saying in conversations, you can teach them the prompts or the questions that ask for those things like, what do you think? Or do you have another example of how this would work? And and then on the flip side, this sentence starters for sharing what that can sound like, like, Oh, I see that differently. Or I want to add on to what you said.

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And

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really, again, like starting with one or two skills, or prompts that you want students to practice with.

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But again, like just giving students that time to talk, even if it's a simple partner share, and really listening in and using, using what you hear as a guide for where to where to move your students next and not get caught up in? Well, my student talk needs to look this way, or it needs to sound that way. We all need to start somewhere. And

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and I think providing those concrete, the concrete language is important. And modeling that for students is really important. And not giving them too much. Yes. No, that no, that was something I was gonna say also, um, we definitely want to provide those scaffolding for students and lots of support, but also knowing when to stop with the support and actually allowing our students to be those self directed learners, right. And so one thing that I also really loved is the word bank, just because we have so many vocabulary or terminology that we want our students to learn. And so providing them a word bank that they can start practicing with is really important to, you know, in our community is something that we are always talking about is collaborative work and getting our students to talk and you know, keeping in mind with the past three years, our students, you know, some of them were isolated, where they were just at home. And so having that collaboration, in person, or even just getting them to talk to each other the social skills, it's a little bit behind, and that's okay, because of what we've gone through. Right. So, like you said, lots of modeling lots of opportunities for them to talk. But I think it's also the relationship aspect of it too, right of starting off with low lift prompts, something that students can easily have conversations about, and we can't tell you what those low lift prompts are, because you know, your community well, right. So it's like, Oh, if you know that most, most of your students like a certain thing. Definitely have a conversation about that. And how can you tie that in with the content that you're teaching? And so I love the turn and talk, I think that, again, is a very bite sized actionable steps for educators to start kind of integrated, that language acquisition. Right. And so I have a question for you, Rebecca, do you have any tech tools or anything that you'd like to use for language learning? I don't have any tech tools, per se. But I think whenever I'm like at a loss, for you know, what can I how can I plan for language? Like there's so many resources online right now. And so many lists, and I think what you said is really important, like, we know, educators know their students the best. And so taking the list of like, the sentence prompts and sentence starters.

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And, and like knowing your students well enough to, you know, discard some of them,

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or to focus in on one, one specific area. So, I don't,

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unfortunately, don't have any tech tools. But

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I'd say that there are a lot of resources out there for language learning in general. And it can be a lot and it can be overwhelming. But giving, giving ourselves permission to discard or just start small is, is really important. Yes, there's that I love that because I'm also very just like tech heavy. So I always ask people and you know, for any of their thoughts, and it's nice to just kind of sit back and say like, No, I actually don't have a tech tool that I'm like 100% obsessed with but there are so many resources out there that anyone can use, right? And so I think for our

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educators who are looking for tech tools. I know there's a push for captions, and having the captions in different languages, just so that again, validating and elevating that home language. And so if that's a stronger language that our students have, then really having that as an as an option for them to learn in their home language, having the captions, so they're still working on like their reading skills. And I think that that's beautiful. I actually don't have an idea of like, which tech tool or tool it is for captions in different languages. But I love that there's an option for it. Now, another thing that I've heard from some of our world languages, teachers, as well as our multilingual,

40:43  
or teachers who teach multilingual learners is that they do a lot of like recording, right so that students can see where they were in the beginning to where they are now. So being able to really witness the growth of like, you know, what, there were some words that you didn't learn before, and unit one, but now we're at the end of unit one. And here's how you sound and here's how you're using these words. So utilizing tools like flip, or even Screencastify, anything that's like screen recording, or even just as a way for students to record themselves. Having conversations is also a really powerful tool that they could watch and see the growth. So, okay, well, is there anything else that we should know or talk about?

41:32  
I think we have talked about this a little bit. But I think, you know, one thing I would just encourage teachers to do, is to really be okay with some experimenting and learning as they support multilingual students. I think what you said earlier about how students can really feel,

41:55  
feel when their teachers are afraid or nervous, or don't know what to do with them like we can, we can unintentionally ignore students when we get overwhelmed. And, and so I think just really approaching it with curiosity. And knowing like you said that our students want to be want to connect with us, they want to feel that sense of belonging. So really, fighting through that intimidating feeling.

42:29  
And I know that sometimes, we can get overwhelmed with teaching language learners because we don't feel like we're grammarians or we're language experts, or we know how to develop language. But it takes it just takes a little bit of practice and a little bit of intentionality and giving yourself permission to start small. And to just just start with that question around. You know, what kind of language do my students need to access this content? What kind of student language do my students need to express their learning, and then allowing yourself just to get better with time, but that the most important thing is that our students feel like they have that sense of belonging and that they their language, all of the languages that they speak, and the cultures and their lived experiences are welcome and valid for their learning. Yeah, I'm just sitting and processing all of that. And I think it would have been really, really great to have that type of learning environment growing up, you know, just because I just got rid of my language because I wanted to assimilate and just kind of focus on the English language, because I felt like that was how I was going to succeed. And so really, finding that sense of belonging is really, really important. So

43:54  
thank you for,

43:57  
for just saying that. Just having the sense of belonging, I think everybody just wants to belong, right? And I think as educators, like I said, it's very, very uncomfortable to know that we don't know something. And I think there's this vulnerability piece of it all of just having this conversation in your head, or even with a student of like, Hey, I don't know about your culture, hey, I don't know about your language, but I'm here to learn with you. So teach me as I teach you this English language or whatever language, right? Like, I want you to also feel that you can teach me and I think there's also a sense of fear of making mistakes and saying the wrong thing. And I think

44:40  
mistakes are bound to happen. You know, we say things that come out in that can be harmful, that can be a little inappropriate at the same time. It's also just catching it right just being able to be like, Oh, my goodness, that's not right. self correction, self education.

44:59  
We're

45:00  
Gonna make mistakes. And it's okay to make mistakes. And as long as we model that with our students, then they know that there's not a perfectionist expectation out of them and that it's okay for them to make mistakes because they know

45:14  
that even like my dad, who still has the Filipino accent, the pronunciations that he have of English words, sometimes it's really funny, and it could be seen as like a curse word.

45:25  
And, and it's, it's something that we laugh about all the time. But it's just again, like, mistakes are meant to be mistakes are meant to be had. There are some times where it's lost in translation as well, or like you think they said something? And that's not really what they said.

45:43  
So it's a lot of skills that we're constantly working on as human beings. And it's okay to have that miscommunication. It's okay to not get it right the first time, it's okay to be vulnerable and say that you don't know. And I think

46:01  
approaching it and that way, as opposed to avoiding or ignoring, or hoping that they just get it. Right. I think that that ladder, or Yeah, I think that just is more harmful than you actually making those mistakes and correcting them. Yeah, absolutely. I should just like, got into my fields about that.

46:28  
All right. Well, Rebecca, what do you hope to see in the future and what goals do you have?

46:33  
Well, I'm I'm really hopeful that through our work at Isla Sef, we'll get to a place where publishers are creating materials that capitalize on the assets of multilingual learners, and not only publishers but organizations that provide professional learning for, for teachers, really center

46:59  
center, multilingual learners, you know, multilingual learners are about a third of our student population. And we really need to do better and I believe we're, we're already getting there, we're, we've started on a better path. And largely, it's because teachers have been demanding better. Teachers are saying, This is great. But what about buying multilingual learners, and they're really putting the pressure on, on professional learning providers and publishers to, to really think about this. And I hope that we can get to a place where teachers aren't having to spend so much time planning and thinking about how to modify their instruction, but that, that it's just front and center on everyone's minds, like how are we going to make this instructional approach or this curriculum, the most accessible for all of our students, including multilingual learners.

48:06  
That is a great hope. I also hoped for that, so manifested, fingers crossed, all of that good stuff. And so, Rebecca, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Listeners, remember, you can always email us at podcast@modernclassrooms.org. And you can find the show notes for this episode at podcast.modernclassrooms.org/126. We'll have this episode's recap and transcript uploaded to the Modern Classrooms blog on Friday, so be sure to check there or check back in the show notes for this episode if you'd like to access those. Thank you all for listening. Have a great week, and we'll be back next Sunday.

48:46  
Thank you so much for listening. You can find links to topics and tools we discussed in our show notes for this episode. And remember, you can learn more about our work at www.modernclassrooms.org. And you can learn the essentials of our model through our free course at learn.modernclassrooms.org. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @modernclassproj that's p r o j We are so appreciative of all you do for students in schools. Have a great week and we'll be back next Sunday with another episode of the Modern Classrooms Project podcast.

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