Highest Aspirations

Welcome to Highest Aspirations, an education podcast focused on providing educators with inspiration and strategies to help multilingual learners achieve their highest aspirations. We have a very special guest with us today, Dr. Rebecca Palacios. This episode is dedicated to all of our educators who are in back-to-school mode and I could think of no one better to get us talking about parent engagement and early childhood education than Dr. Rebecca Palacios.  Dr. Palacios is a National Board Certified Teacher, and leading expert in early childhood education. With over five decades of experience, she is a pioneer in the field of dual language learning and specializes in curriculum planning and instructional design. In addition to being a founding director of The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and formerly serving as its vice-chairperson, she is also a co-founder of the Texas National Board Coalition for Teaching and serves as its Treasurer. And she also serves as a Curriculum Board Member fo

Welcome back to Season 13 of Highest Aspirations, an education podcast focused on providing educators with inspiration and strategies to help multilingual learners achieve their highest aspirations. In this episode, Steve and Sandra will be sharing the mic as they talk about change, why it can be intimidating to some and motivating to others, and what’s next for both of us moving forward. They discuss what we can do to mitigate the emotions change can cause, how organizational culture impacts change management - or "change readiness", and how change can be used as a catalyst for personal and professional growth.  To download the full episode transcript, click here. To find more podcast episodes and show notes/key takeaways, visit our podcast resource page. For additional free resources geared toward supporting English learners, visit our blog. To expand your connection within the Ellevation community by join our Ellevation Educator Facebook Group. Enjoy the episode and the chance to learn more

We made it to the last episode of Season 12 - and I couldn’t be happier with our guest and the topics we covered. Dr. Sonia Soltero has been a contributor and collaborator in our community since the very beginning. She is currently working with Chicago Public Schools to help support newcomers, so we are excited to bring her on again to share the experience with others. We cover a lot of ground in our conversation, focusing on… Why educators need additional support and training to address the SEL needs of their newcomer and migrant students A framework educators can follow to ensure they are addressing the variety of students’ needs in their instruction? How we can leverage partnerships with universities and colleges to better prepare educators to work with multilingual learners …and much more Dr. Soltero is Professor and Chair of the Department of Leadership, Language, and Curriculum, and former Director of the Bilingual-Bicultural Education Graduate Program at DePaul University in Chicago. Solter

Welcome back to Highest Aspirations, an education podcast focused on providing educators with inspiration and strategies to help multilingual learners achieve their highest aspirations. In this episode, our interview is conducted by Sandra Medrano-Arroya, Ellevation’s National Director of Multilingual Learner Success, who speaks with Sofía Núñez of Empower the Voice. They leverage their vast collective experience as multilingual learner professionals to provide valuable insights on:  Partnering with families of our English learners to close learning gaps in the classroom and creating more inclusive environments by bridging the language and culture gap They also lay out three specific focus areas for fostering parent engagement and advocacy Sofía Núñez is an energetic, committed education leader, public speaker and consultant. She is the founder and CEO of Empower the Voice, a non-profit focusing on increasing opportunities for Hispanic students through empowering families to participate in leadership, l

Welcome back to Highest Aspirations, an education podcast focused on providing educators with inspiration and strategies to help multilingual learners achieve their highest aspirations. In this episode, we zoom out some to talk about what happens after multilingual learners and other students from marginalized communities leave K-12 schools and what we can do to ensure they are equipped to rewatch their highest aspirations. Our guest David Nungaray and I talk about… What the data says about economic and social mobility of students from historically marginalized communities How we can help improve outcomes and long-term trajectories of students from historically marginalized communities, including multilingual learners And how we can we leverage the linguistic and cultural assets MLs bring to better our communities while simultaneously working to close wealth gaps For the full episode transcript, click here. For additional resources and to find information about the 2024 Ellevation Scholarship that i

In this week's episode, we're looking closely at teaching and learning academic language with our friends Diane Staehr Fenner and Sydney Snyder. We discuss the need to bring in sociocultural context and background knowledge that our students bring with them. We also get into how we can avoid taking a one-size-fits-all approach and personalize learning to accelerate learning. Of course, Diane and Sydney also share some simple and effective strategies from their book Unlocking Multilingual Learners' Potential: Strategies for Making Content Accessible and Culturally Responsive Teaching for Multilingual Learners: Tools for Equity. that you can use right away. You can download the full episode transcript here, and visit our EL Community blog for additional free resources on EL education. Diane Staehr Fenner, Ph.D., is the author of eight books on multilingual learner education, including the co-author of Unlocking Multilingual Learners' Potential: Strategies for Making Content Accessible and Cul

What are the primary challenges EL families are facing in their communities and how can programs like FLI address them? How did COVID and other recent challenges in the education world impact absenteeism for students, and how can those issues be repaired? How can we support parents and families to address trauma they have experienced in order to improve their relationships with and outcomes for their children? We discuss these family engagement focused topics and more on this episode of Highest Aspirations featuring Consuelo Castillo Kickbusch and the work her team does through her Family Leadership Institute (FLI). Born and raised in a small, borderside barrio of Laredo, Texas, Consuelo Castillo Kickbusch conquered the challenges of poverty, discrimination and illiteracy. Raised without material wealth, Consuelo learned from her immigrant parents that their wealth was in culture, tradition, values, and faith. The values Consuelo learned as a child were reinforced throughout her career in the United States mi

On this episode of Highest Aspirations, we explore the importance of building personalized professional learning opportunities that provide educators with opportunities to continuously reflect on their work. Our guests Shélynn (Shey) Riel and Anna Ciriani-Dean provide simple frameworks within an experiential learning cycle designed to improve instruction and reframe negative self-criticism into more constructive, actionable feedback.  Shey and Anna produce and host the Teacher The Teacher Think-Aloud Podcast to create a reflective listening experience for teachers of the English language and to build a community of educators around the world who unite behind a shared fervor for teaching and learning. Shélynn (Shey) Riel holds a Master of Education in TESOL and over fifteen years of experience in education. Alongside her work as co-host of The Teacher Think-Aloud Podcast, Shey works with Bridge Education as the Expert Series Webinar Moderator, facilitating live monthly webinars that bring together ELT experts

On this episode of Highest Aspirations, we take a deep dive into how professional learning can help create and nurture the skillsets and the mindsets educators need to best serve multilingual learners. We challenge the often idealized assumption that “every teacher is a teacher of language” and explore ways to make that a reality rather than a desired state. We also talk about how effective leadership be used as a means to overcome issues teachers are facing like fatigue, burnout, and working in silos. Finally, we highlight some ways schools can leverage partnerships within the community to navigate teacher shortages and build their diverse educator pipeline. To help us address some of these complicated topics, we brought in Dr. Sarah Schmidt de Carranza. Sarah has been has been an educator in Saint Paul Public Schools since 2003. She achieved National Board Certification in Teaching English as a New Language in 2009, and successfully re-certified in 2019. She joined the Saint Paul Public Schools Office of Mu

What is cultural linguistic responsiveness and what does this look like in action in the classroom? What are some of the biggest challenges facing the school system in becoming more culturally responsive, and what are some steps to take to address them? How can professional development be an effective lever in improving cultural responsiveness in a lasting, sustained way? We answer these questions and more in this interview with Dr. Sharroky Hollie. Dr. Hollie Dr. Sharroky Hollie is a national educator who provides professional development to thousands of educators in the area of cultural responsiveness. Since 2000, Dr. Hollie has trained over 150,000 educators and worked in nearly 2,000 classrooms. In addition to his experience in education, he has authored several texts and journal articles. Most recently, he wrote Strategies for Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching and Learning (2015). For additional free resources, episode takeaways, and more, visit our blog. Download the full episode transc

What are cross-linguistic connections, and how can they be used to develop metalinguistic awareness? How can pulling in both English and home languages during instruction actually accelerate learning, among other benefits? How can this holistic approach to language learning lead to biliteracy? We discuss these questions and much more with Dr. Sandra Mercuri, who we met last fall at the La Cosecha conference in New Mexico. Dr. Mercuri is a nationally recognized Educational Consultant in the area of second language acquisition, dual language education, and curriculum integration for biliteracy development. She has over 28 years of experience in teaching in K-12 schools and at the university level in Argentina and the United States.  She is currently working on research on the development of academic language across the content areas, language transfer, and the effect of long-term professional development on bilingual and ESL teachers’ instructional practices. For more episode resources and additional free cont

In this shortened final episode before holiday break, we're sharing out a few highlights from the season and what's to come when we get back. As always, thanks for listening, we wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season and will be back with new episodes January 16th, 2024! Visit https://ellevationeducation.com/el-community for more free content and resources. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/highest-aspirations/message

In this episode of Highest Aspirations, we're discussing dual language programs: what key features make them successful, how we make them more equitable, the steps we can take to further progress in the dual language movement, and much more. For this conversation, we're interviewing Conor Williams, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, where he writes about education, immigration, early education, school choice, and work-life balance challenges for American families. He is an expert on American educational inequity, English learner students, dual immersion programs, urban education reform, and the history of progressivism. He was previously a senior researcher in New America’s Education Policy Program, a senior researcher in its Early Education Initiative, and the founding director of its Dual Language Learners National Work Group. He has taught postsecondary courses at Georgetown University, George Washington University, and American University. He is a member of the Children’s Equity Project a

Welcome back to Highest Aspirations, an education podcast focused on providing educators with inspiration and strategies to help multilingual learners achieve their highest aspirations. In our last episode, we spoke with Dr. Joanna Dreby and Dr. Eric Macias about the work they are doing facilitate meaningful discussions among undergraduate students on immigration at the University of Albany and how some of the strategies they use might work in K-12 settings.  In this episode, I spoke with one of their students about how the experience impacted her and shifted her academic trajectory.  Falmari Rojas-Barrios is a graduate student who worked with Dr. Derby and Dr. Macias. She joins us to share a student perspective on how access (and lack thereof) to EL services impacted her K-12 experience, the challenges she and many young people with immigrant parents face in sharing their migration experiences, and some recommendations for how schools can better support the many students who share her experience.  We will be

We have a repeat guest on Highest Aspirations today. I first talked with Dr. Joanna Dreby and some of her students back in March of 2022. We discussed the challenges that US-born children of immigrants face in school, family, and social environments. The two episodes we did were really eye-opening for me and many of our listeners. Joanna and one of the students we profiled in the series - Falmari Rojas-Barrios - will be joining us at our upcoming IMPACT conference to talk more about this topic, but we also decided to put this episode together around some of the other work Joanna and her team are doing at the University of Albany. Dr. Eric Macias has been an integral part of this work, and he joins us in this interview to make connections between what they are doing with undergraduate students and how we might be able to apply their learnings to K-12 settings as well.  We dig into an impactful independent study experience they designed at the University of Albany to facilitate meaningful discussions among unde

How has a misinterpretation of “self-care” led to burnout in the education field? How can heightened emotional intelligence improve our ability to understand and manage our emotions, particularly when advocating for our MLLs? What are some improvements or changes we can call for in the educational ecosystem to provide better, meaningful emotional support for educators? Dorina Sackman-Ebuwa in an honest, vulnerable, and sometimes emotional conversation about how a misinterpretation of “self-care” has led to burnout in the education field, how heightened emotional intelligence improves our ability to understand and manage our emotions, particularly when advocating for our MLLs, and some improvements we can call for to provide better, more meaningful emotional support for educators.  Dr. Dorina Sackman-Ebuwa is known as The Lab Coat Teacher and affectionately “Miss Dorito” by her students and colleagues from around the world. A Top 4 Finalist for National Teacher of the Year and Florida Teacher of the Year, poly

How can we determine the difference between pushing our language learners to productive struggle vs. past their frustration point? What can educators do to intentionally address or decrease the impact that our own implicit bias may have on our expectations for our students? How can we support students, particularly multilingual learners, in un-learning low self-esteem or self-confidence for their own learning abilities? We address these questions and more with Amy King and Yvonne Williams from WCEPS, who each have over 20 years of experience in multilingual education in a variety of roles. They specialize in providing highly effective professional learning opportunities to help educators best serve their multilingual learners. Download the full episode transcript here and find additional episode resources and takeaways on our EL Community blog. Finally visit our EL Community Facebook page where you’ll find valuable tips from others as well as the connections you need to help you grow professionally. There is

What role do identity and ‘social location’ play for educators  and how can we be more intentional about updating the education systems we work in?How can we implement a school wide system of support for educators and a culture that encourages collaboration and empathy? What is some advice or a good starting point for educators who feel overwhelmed at the idea of add-on work to successfully support language learners in their classes? We discuss these questions and more with Sarah Ottow, a longtime educator with over twenty years of experience in teaching, training, and coaching for English language learner success. She returned to Highest Aspirations to talk with us about creating school-wide systems of improvement for more equitable instruction for ALL students. As the founder of Confianza and author of  The Language Lens for Content Classrooms: A Guide for K-12 Educators of English and Academic Language Learners, she has many strategies to share that will help you efficiently apply language instruction in

How can teachers use relationship building to improve learning outcomes for hesitant or disconnected students? How can we encourage our students to embrace and celebrate their bilingualism? We dive into these questions and more with Sonia Águila, a California dual language teacher who has been recognized in her district, her state, and nationally for the work she has done in the field of multilingual education. Born in Santa Barbara, California, Sonia Águila grew up in a small town near Guadalajara, Mexico. She returned to California at age 11 only knowing how to count to ten in English. After experiencing many challenges and even being discouraged from pursuing a higher education as a young student, she was eventually selected as her high school Salutatorian and Latino Student of the Year at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She followed her lifelong dream of becoming a teacher after  obtaining an Elementary Teaching Credential with an emphasis in Spanish and a Masters Degree in Education. Sonia

How can we apply the four aspects of self-determination theory to increasing opportunities for intrinsic motivation to flourish? What can teachers do in their classrooms to make their students, particularly MLLs, feel more connected to their learning? Why is it important to find a healthy balance between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for students?  In his second appearance on Highest Aspirations, we get into the topic of student motivation and what we can do to spark it, and maybe more importantly, to sustain it with Larry Ferlazzo. Ferlazzo has been teaching English and Social Studies to English Language Learners and English-proficient students at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento for twenty-one years.  He is the author or editor of thirteen books on education, writes a teacher advice column for Education Week and hosts an accompanying podcast, and hosts a popular resource-sharing blog. Download the full episode transcript and visit our blog for more resources and free EL educator toolkits. ---