Highest Aspirations

On this episode of Highest Aspirations, we feature part 1 of a 2 part series with Dr. Margarita Calderón, former Professor Emerita and Senior Research Scientist at Johns Hopkins University and author of several publications about multilingual education. During our conversation, we address the following questions: Why is it that many students are not receiving the Seal of Biliteracy after being on track for the recognition during their primary school years? How can we ensure that English learners and dual language learners are given the opportunity to engage in rigorous content area courses? Why is focusing on Tier 2 vocabulary, or connectors and transition words, so important to developing reading comprehension skills? How can a whole-school approach to professional development help content teachers infuse academic language into their lessons? Why are we still not seeing the progress we’d like in the areas of reading and writing for English learners and how can we to improve? For the past ten years Dr