Dr. Andrea Honigsfeld is Professor Emerita in the School of Education and Human Services at Molloy University in Rockville Centre, New York. Before entering the field of teacher education, she was an English-as-a-foreign-language teacher in Hungary, and an English-as-a-second-language teacher in New York City. She also taught Hungarian at New York University. She was the recipient of a doctoral fellowship at St. John's University, New York, where she conducted research on individualized instruction. She has published extensively on working with multilingual learners. She received a Fulbright Award to lecture in Iceland in the fall of 2002. She has published 35 books, 14 of which are US national bestsellers.
Andrea: recognizing any kind of missteps, mistakes, biases, inequities, naming them, but then to do something about them is going to require us to apply what we know to every decision. Andrea: Multilingual learners are at the periphery. They are marginalized in society, definitely. It's really heartbreaking, the experiences that many immigrant communities are facing. So if the students are marginalized, then we need that type of brave and courageous leadership that would bring the students back to center. Brandon: Hey everyone. Hola a todos. I'm Brandon Cardet-Hernandez, and you're listening to Leading Multilingual Learning, powered by Medly Learning. Each episode, we're exploring the leadership, the ideas, and the insights shaping better education for multilingual learners. And today, I am very excited to welcome my friend and a true leader in the field, Dr. Andrea Honigsfeld. Brandon: Dr. Honigsfeld is a professor in the School of Education and Human Services at Molloy University in New York. Before entering the field of teacher education, she was an English as a foreign language teacher in Hungary and an English as a second language teacher in New York City. She also taught Hungarian at NYU. She was the recipient of a doctoral fellowship at St. John's University in New York, where she conducted research on individualized instruction. Brandon: And anyone who is listening who pays close attention to this work knows she has published extensively on working with multilingual learners. I think there are 35 books, 14 of which are US national best sellers. She was awarded a Fulbright to lecture in Iceland in the fall of 2002. This feels very major that you are here with us and we are really grateful. So thank you. Andrea: Well, I'm the one who is grateful that you know of my work and you wanted to feature me on your podcast. So thank you so much for having me. Brandon: I'm honored. So, you have this really impressive bio. It only can include the things that need to be included for a paragraph, but we always ask our guests, what's something that never makes it in that you wish more people knew about? Andrea: Well, I'm actually a mom of three boys. Even though I look like a girl's mom, right? And what I sometimes mention, but it would not be put in a written bio, is that I have been trying to raise my three children bilingually, multilingually, to three different levels of success. Brandon: Wow. Tell me more. Andrea: Well, the firstborn is often where you're learning about parenting. You have very high standards, high expectations, no chocolate until after the second birthday, or all of those other rules that go out the door with the second and the third child, just let me survive here. And it's also so different expectations, different context. It's the moment that I realized that it's going to be a challenge to raise my children bilingually was when two of my children, the first two, chose English as their play language. Brandon: Interesting. Andrea: Very, it was very interesting. It's also the schooling experience, friendships, the community that we lived in had very few or no Hungarians. Hungarian is my mother tongue, my first language. But English is my third language, so it's not even my second language. So I truly live that multilingual identity, but how challenging it is to pass it on to your children. Andrea: And I'm just totally removing those armors that Brené Brown talks about and and showing my vulnerability that it's not easy, that generational language loss, that even when we're so committed to multilingualism, as I am with all my books and all my publications and research and everywhere I go, I champion multilingualism, yet it is truly a challenge to do it in your own home. Brandon: One, thank you. I'm a dad myself to a nine-year-old, and only one, so no chocolate till after two. But this has been a struggle for me. I have a lot of guilt around it. We do this work, we're talking about it all the time. And it is similar. Many of his friendships exist in English, and that's beautiful too. And I watch him struggle with expressive language skills and really not wanting to speak when he's in public and responding to me in English. So I see you. Brandon: But I have so many questions for you today that I would be building like a two-hour episode, which is not our goal. So I'm going to be really thoughtful in what we get to talk about, but there is something that's really exciting that's happening. You have an upcoming book that's about to be published this fall. It's called Multilingual Justice. I got really lucky because you shared a little bit of it with me. But you chose not to call it multilingual equity or multilingual inclusion. Equity has been the dominant word in education for years. I worry it's getting watered down in terms of its its meaning. But what does justice demand that equity language alone doesn't? And why this distinction for you when you were thinking about the book? Andrea: Well, I'm also going to go back for a moment to another word that you use, which is inclusion. Because that's yet another concept that we often connect to diversity, equity, inclusion, justice. Inclusion to me suggests that I have the power, I hold the power. Am I including you or not? Then I also have the power to exclude you or not. Equity to me represents many of those practices that we put in place to make sure that everybody gets what they need, what they deserve, what they can incorporate into their lives and then be successful. So resources, opportunities, and so forth. But ultimately justice gets to the core of all of this. That's when we dismantle barriers, that's when we make systemic changes. Everything else is needed: inclusion, diversity, equity. All of those are definitely interrelated and important elements of the work that we do. I'm not putting any one of those down in any way. Yet I chose the title to be truly powerful. Multilingual justice. I also have not seen that concept on the cover of any books. I've done my own research. And I have incorporated an equity literacy framework, so equity is going to continue to be very important to me, by Paul Gorski and Katy Swalwell. So equity will be the pathway. The tool, equity literacy will be the knowledge, understanding, the disposition, all of those that we build, the capacity that we nurture to get to multilingual justice. Brandon: I want to talk to you about that framework in a little bit, and I'm really grateful for the distinction between diversity, inclusion, equity, and to get us to justice. I thought it was really powerful, so thank you. You developed the book's definition of multilingual justice through a Delphi panel, an international group of experts who worked through multiple rounds to arrive at this shared language. One phrase that really stands out to me is that multilingual individuals should be able to use their full linguistic repertoire, and you say, "without having to shed any part of who they are." Say more about that. Where do schools most commonly ask students and families to shed a part of who they are? Andrea: So there's a strong English-only movement. English as the most valued language in US society, as it's demonstrated in multiple ways in education, in larger contexts, political decisions, or just even in Queens, New York Park, which I have a story about, where I was corrected and reprimanded for speaking the language of my choice to my child when the child was only a few months old. So I think we encounter this hierarchy of what is valued, what is important, what is going to get you to be successful as society defines that. And language is an important tool in that. Yet if we ask our children, our students, our families to give up their language and to replace that with the language that society, the only language that society truly values, then we're taking away a part of their identity. So I actually have a surprise for you, or maybe for your listeners, which are in none of my other books, and probably that's another thing that nobody really knows about me, didn't make it into my resume, is that I write poetry. So I not only write non-fiction, all of those books are teacher guidebooks, handbooks. So I'd like to read you one of my poems that partially answers this question. Brandon: I would love this. Andrea: Hopefully it's just bending the genre of writing a Routledge book, which is often considered a highly academic publication that Routledge puts out. So writing poetry and including art, art from a friend and art from one of my children, is yet another layer to this book that gave me an opportunity to just give something unique, something of me that's so, so deep and vulnerable. So here is one of my poems. Andrea: The title is, What is Language? Andrea: A tool to communicate, a thought to translate, a channel of cognition, a rich tapestry of expression, an incredible creation of collective art, a piece of my heart, an act of defiance, the opposite of silence, a vessel of history, a thread to memory, a part of my identity. Andrea: So this is why we cannot take away that part of one's identity. We have to recognize the rich individual, institutional, and societal value behind multilingualism. And that's what was the driving force behind this book. This is actually the poem that opens up the entire book. I just thought, I'm going to just put it out there. Let's show a side of me and a side of this topic of how, how deeply personal and at the same time, deeply professional and political this topic is. Brandon: Oh, I'm thinking, I'm really holding the deeply personal, the deeply professional, the deeply political. And I'm also moved, I'm moved in so many ways. One, because I think you're right, it is incredibly genre-bending. It's not how we think about academic text. And at the same time, there's something about poetry as a language learner that feels really far away from early access. Right? Because it it leans on figurative language, because it often ties in idioms and and these sort of funny ways that language can move. I'm just, I'm having like an aha moment of just like, I think there's something really special about building that in to this conversation. And in English, I just, thank you. Andrea: Thank you. Thank you for recognizing that, because there's data, there is evidence, there is research. As you mentioned, the Delphi panel that I put together, unbelievable group of 30 plus experts from around the world who helped me define multilingual justice and injustice. And all of that will speak to the mind. But what speaks to the heart are stories, poetry, art, something that we deeply care about. So I wanted to bring all of those together into this very short book. It's, it's surprisingly short, but I was just so excited to be able to be part of Paul Gorski's equity series within the Routledge publication house. Brandon: Amazing. Brandon: I am very moved, and I want to shift gears, but it's not shifting gears at all. The the book defines multilingual injustice, but does something that I really appreciated. And it named something really specific that linguistic discrimination is often connected to racial discrimination, and that language is often a proxy for race. Brandon: And that's something that makes a lot of people uncomfortable to talk about. It's kind of easier to stay in a single lane of, like, how do we do the programmatic work and the pedagogical work of developing and accelerating language skills for multilingual learners? Brandon: You chose to name it. How do you think this dynamic plays out at schools and why is it important, why was it important for you to just say it? Andrea: Indeed, I named it as my white privilege, because my multilingualism, which is yet another thing I didn't put in my resume, I am studying my seventh language. Everybody is in awe of that. Yet we have so many of our multilingual learners who come from different parts of the world where multilingualism is the norm, where everybody is not bilingual, multilingual, multi-dialectal, and interact with different tribal and other kind of indigenous languages and national languages with ease. Yet that is not recognized. That child or those many, many children who have that kind of multilingualism as opposed to my European or white multilingualism, just looked at very differently. And we have to name it. You're absolutely right. You have to name it. We have to talk about it again with vulnerability. Since in this time, I'm the one who benefits from the oohs and the aahs and the affirmations and the acknowledgements. So it gives me the opportunity, that entry way to raise awareness initially about how we could be and should be valuing all students and all families rich linguistic heritages as well as their current communication modalities. Brandon: Thank you. I appreciate that, and I think it's important, particularly in this moment. Your book's structured, you were alluding to this earlier, your book's structure maps directly onto Paul Gorski and Katie Swalwell's five essential abilities of equity literacy. So, recognize, respond, I'm going to get these, redress, cultivate, sustain. Most schools are comfortable with the first two, recognize and respond, I think. But noticing inequity and responding in the moment, that's the tough stuff. So what does the work tend to stall? Where does it tend to stall? And what makes the shift from responding to redressing, readdressing, how does that actually change policy and structure? Talk to me a little bit about that. Andrea: Sure. So the first two, again, recognizing even the subtlest biases, inequities, even for that you need a keen eye or attentive approach and stance, responding skillfully and equitably. That's another skillset that we have to nurture. But first these first two practices or abilities in the framework often happen in the moment or require only short-term commitment. Brandon: Yeah. And we seem to feel comfortable with that in education. We have that workshop, we have that guest speaker, we have a lot of things that are happening around... Brandon: It can be reactive. It's part of an exchange. Yeah. Andrea: Yes. Yet, once we get to the next three abilities, the redressing biases and inequities, we're expected to understand and address them not just in the short term, but in the longer term. So that requires vision, that requires commitment, leadership commitment. It's often that idea of top-down, bottom-up, meet in the middle. So I need to have, not buy in, because I do not like the word buy in, that would suggest that we're selling anything. Instead, I like personal and professional commitment. So how I show up as an educator, that will be the bottom up. And then the top down is is leadership and systemic support for this work. So that's exactly what you pinpointed is going to be the challenge. How do we move from that immediate, maybe even just recognizing any kind of missteps, mistakes, biases, inequities, naming them. But then to do something about them in the longer term is going to require us to apply what we know to every decision. Policy, practice, program design, curriculum, curriculum instruction assessment. So all of those big, big decisions that are made would now have to be connected to multilingual justice. And that's that longer term commitment. And often, if I may say, in many cases, multilingual learners are at the periphery. They are marginalized in society. Definitely. If you're just watching the news, this is really heartbreaking, the experiences that many immigrant communities are facing. So if the students are marginalized, then we need that type of brave and courageous leadership that would bring the students back to center. That's why the subtitle of my book is Centering Their Experiences and acknowledging them, celebrating them as, as linguistically gifted students. Students who are not deficient or deficit in anything, but they're building on their existing cultural and linguistic identities and repertoires, whatever we're teaching here in the United States. Brandon: I hear you, I feel you, and I want to know though, I'm imagining someone listening, they're a district leader, the ML director in their district, maybe a school principal. What do I do tomorrow? And that's always the hard part in these moments. Then what's my first step towards building that culture, developing that mindset in my community, in my educators, not getting buy in, but I wrote it down and now it's literally on a Post-it on my wall, having that personal and professional commitment. What's my first step? What do I do? Andrea: Well, I'm not the first one who talks about it, but in this book, I also provide a couple of frameworks, available frameworks or frameworks to adapt, related to equity audits. So in this case, it's a linguistic equity audit, which often we don't do. If there is any kind of an equity audit happening in any school, it might be focusing on other dimensions, equally important dimensions of inequities and biases and prejudices. But what if, what if we actually did something that's connecting our foundational understanding to linguistic bias? I actually, you know what's coming, I wrote a poem about it. Because even this work, it's such a serious academic, equity-oriented work, but well, what if we could take a poetic approach to this one too? And I know I just pulled up two poems. I'm not going to be overwhelming you with them, but I pulled this up because I'd like to share this. Brandon: And you're not overwhelming me. I love this, and I think the folks listening will too. Give, share with us. Andrea: So the title is So Much More. Andrea: When we become aware of and recognize inequities and injustices connected to multilingualism, we notice them, name them, identify them, describe them, deeply reflect on them. Yet we can do so much more. Andrea: When we respond to inequities and injustices by speaking up, we give words to our observations and concerns. We verbally note our discomfort. We challenge discriminatory language or behavior in ourselves and others. We engage in empowering conversations. Yet we can do so much more. Andrea: When we respond to inequities with immediate actions, we offer support to those who were wronged and suffered prejudice or discrimination. We seek out and begin to use resources that provide access to multilingual learners. We educate ourselves and keep learning about multilingualism. Yet we can do so much more. Andrea: We can do so much more. Do so much more. Much more. Brandon: I love it. Andrea: Thank you. Brandon: Do you know what else I love? And I have a million more questions. I love it and I love two things. I want everyone who has great ideas to be seen and heard, but we also know how our industry works. And because of your success, because of the momentum around your body of work, there's a really high likelihood that what you're talking about here will make its way into our communities in a an accelerated fashion. Someone who's maybe their first book wouldn't have the same opportunity. And so I appreciate the risk-taking at this point because I think it's going to it will draw attention in a really meaningful way. Andrea: Thank you for noticing that too. I felt throughout the book, as I was working on it, that nothing has ever come from the heart so much as this particular publication, but also I've never taken this much risk with, with, yes, with naming and challenging many of the notions and practices that are out there. Brandon: Yeah, and could change the invitation that you get to be somewhere. You know, it changes who you show up as. I see you. And at the same time, the rest of the body of work speaks for itself. So if we want to talk scaffolding, who are we going to call? If we want to talk about not translating, you're still the one. So I see, I see this as a really integrated part of the professional experience you're having, but the the broader body of work that you're you've given to the community. Andrea: So interesting that you mentioned the scaffolding book because I was just talking about that book in a number of contexts that was the book that received a lot of additional attention this year. And in that, we also took a little bit of a risk, maybe not as much risk as here since scaffolding is such a well-established practice. Yet we challenged one notion about scaffolding that's so well accepted out there that I'm going to just put it out there to your listeners as well, and that notion is that scaffolds have to go up and have to come down. And our challenge is that instead of thinking about always the teacher holding all the power over scaffolds, that I give it and then I take it away because if it goes up, then it's going to come down when I, the educator, decides that you no longer need it. What if we reconceptualize scaffolding as an opportunity for students to integrate the teacher-initiated scaffolds and strategies into self-directed, independent learning practices? Brandon: I, one, I've heard you talk about this and I and it moves me every time. And in many ways, and not a plug for Medly, but talking about Medly, when we were building Medly, and this sometimes is the hardest part for people to get to sort of wrap their heads around, when we were building Medly, and as we talk about Medly, that's what we talk about. Our kids having a series of supports anywhere they go at any time and being empowered to use it. I think about my own personal experience. I talk about this a lot where it's, and this is true as a teacher, when I was a classroom teacher, our kids raise their hand and a teacher has to make an assessment. Where am I going to go first? And, you know, we scan the room and we often go to the student who we know will take the least amount of time and work our way to where we think the greatest complexity will live. And very often, that's our kids. And that's us. And our kids learn that and we learn a sort of helplessness through that process. We're trained to wait for someone to help us versus the empowering experience being, I have these supports, I know when to use them, I know what will work for me when. Andrea: Yes, yeah. And I often bring my own example, which is very personal, about writing. I have been writing in my third language, I mentioned it earlier, so when I first started writing my very first book-length project was my dissertation, and I was terrified. And I had the mentor, I had the guidance, I had the scaffolds, but everything that I learned from my mentor and through the process, I fully internalized. Nobody gives me outlines anymore. I was given an outline to write your dissertation. This goes in chapter one, chapter two, you have about whatever, 250 words about this and then 500 words about that. So all the whole thing was almost formulaic writing, but I needed to learn the genre. But now I create my own outline, so it became an internalized strategy, a learner strategy, something that we often talk about learner agency. What does that really mean? It means that I can take charge of my own learning and I can be successful on my own. So that's how we redefine scaffolding. So thank you so much for mentioning that book too, because another truly labor of love, but a very, very different type of publication in which we wanted to give almost 400 pages on scaffolding with tons of, tons of examples, classroom examples, student work samples, teacher created materials, and certainly recognizing digital scaffolding, the work that you're doing in Medly too, as a way to be connected to student agency. Students are making their own choices once we guide them in that process and they know how to do that. Brandon: Every time someone joins the Medly team, it's a book they have to read. So it's really foundational to how we try to make sure everyone who's around us in this community is thinking about scaffolding but really holding that idea of the idea of scaffolding fading is too simplistic. It's really about empowering our kids and with that's actually, that's justice work. When I am in control, I see my, I see this my assets and I know how to support them. Andrea: Yes, yeah. We are on the same page. I know that the moment I met you way back when, I knew when we connected that we're speaking the same language. Brandon: Yeah, I see it. Brandon: Okay, I'm nervous about time, but I have some more questions I want to ask you. So, there's a distinction you draw in the book between short-term responses like celebrating heritage months or International Mother Language Day, and sort of the the deeper work of redressing institutional harm. And so there's the sort of symbolic gestures that aren't bad, like Latino Heritage Month is important, but they can become like the entire strategy for a system, for a school, for a community. So how should educators be thinking about this? What what do you think is, you're walking into a community and what do you want to see when you're seeing justice take shape? Andrea: Well, I would suggest that we embrace the five abilities of the equity literacy framework that originally Paul Gorski and his team created and we need to build capacity along all of those dimensions. So rather than thinking that we could just skip over all the previous abilities or previous steps, I would strongly encourage leaders as well as educators who are leaders in their own right too, to build capacity through all those five stages, those five steps. So rather than maybe hoping for a shortcut, isn't there just something that you could give us and then we could go to ability five or the highest level of building capacity around multilingual justice? In all honesty, I cannot provide that kind of shortcut. It has to be truly the heavy lifting, the long-term commitment to have sometimes starting with those very difficult conversations and those aha moments, like I actually did that, a teacher calling after a student in the hallway and telling them English only. Why would it be English only in the hallway when the kids need time out from English? So, so working through those daily, often misguided or even even with the best of intention, teachers say or do things that could be harmful. Working through all five abilities is how we're going to get to multilingual justice. I know maybe you were hoping that I could just give the, there's no magic bullet. There's no magic wand in this type of work. It is the day-to-day, deliberate daily actions as as Shane Safir would say it, that's what we have to commit to. Brandon: I knew you couldn't, but maybe you'd surprise me. The, I do love this idea of sort of a constant inventory. Yes, and this it's like really being a reflective practitioner, right? Who am I? And there's owning those moments where you created harm. So it's like, yes, celebrate all the successes, the moments you're doing the thing, you're creating opportunities for translanguaging in the class and that student is front and center leading, right? That the poem is being written in a way that our students are able to be their full selves as a writer and a communicator. And also owning those moments where you're like, ooh, I said that thing, right? Like I told that kid who was speaking in Spanish that like, you know, are you talking about me? And that little that little phrase created a moment of shame for that kid because it's like, oh, now people are going to think I'm doing something wrong. Andrea: But ultimately, of course, we have to go back to the underlying causes of the biases and oppressive ideologies, the belief systems that permeate our small and more substantial moves, acts. We certainly have to look at school, district, state policies and practices. We have to examine cultures and climates that we create. Culture is what we do, climate is how we feel within a context. So there's just so many layers to it. And as I already mentioned, curriculum, instruction, and assessment, those three dimensions of what we do daily will have to be closely examined. And and I could go on and on. Certainly it's complex, comprehensive, long-term commitment that is going to be iterative because we have some mobility, educators retire, educators move schools. So it's not something that we could ever say one and done. Oh, we dealt with multilingual justice, moving along to the next challenge. It's something that is going to be probably not just a long term, but a forever commitment. Brandon: Yeah, it's a way of moving through the work. It's a way of being in the work. Speaking of families, the book lays out what multilingual justice requires in practice, right? Responsive curriculum, multimodal assessment, family engagement that goes beyond just translating the flyer or having translation if, if a school leader read that list and said, oh, we're we're already doing most of this, what would you tell them to look at more closely? What is the gap between what schools think they're providing and what multilingual students and families actually experience? Andrea: I would want to bring in maybe my other body of work out there and that's connected to collaboration. Is it just inclusion? Is it just invitational or is it representation of true collaboration? When we think of bringing a building a collaborative culture of equity and justice, we build partnerships. It's a two-way street. It's not a a translated invitation to that coffee hour with the best of intention again, that has to happen and that should happen. But who remained the decision makers? Who is simply informed about what is already being done to multilingual learners or any other subgroups? So building a collaborative culture through distributive leadership practices is what I would highlight here as one possible way to just think about whether we're really doing everything yet or if all the other, all of the above is check, check, check, we've done that, we've been there. But looking much more deeply at the processes that are in place from the moment a child arrives in school and we identify them as multilingual learners receiving services or placing them in a particular program all the way until they graduate and even post graduate, what is their trajectory for learning? Something very interesting that I had multiple times a conversation around, center's multilingual success in a way that we rarely see or hear discussed, and that is our students who are declassified. So a multilingual learner who no longer receives services has reached proficiency. They tend to outperform students academically when disaggregated data is examined and we'll see that how those students are doing. So, re-positioning multilingual learners as not being on the end of, well, these kids need A, B, C. How expensive it is to design those programs. But when those programs are in place and when it's a collaborative culture that we build with family engagement, through teacher collaboration, we truly demonstrate tremendous success for this population. Brandon: For the population, and I will add to this, for every student because what you end up getting is a much healthier precision in pedagogical practices. And you're right, our kids outpace their peers, their monolingual peers when they declassify. That is true nationally. And that is a reminder that those pedagogical practices and then the skills that get put in place, embedded into a young person's consciousness around how to learn and how to be a thinker and a doer, those things are great things for everyone, regardless of their language of origin. And that's where great instruction happens. I bet you if we went and looked at schools that were outperforming or outpacing in terms of declassification, there would be some really interesting things to see pedagogically around the performance of other students who are monolingual. Andrea: Yeah. I do have a poem for you. Brandon: Okay, give it to me. Andrea: Okay. Andrea: This-ing Multilingualism. Andrea: Champion multilingualism as a gift, an asset, so it never gets treated as a source of disability, disadvantage, disorder, disunity, disloyalty. Andrea: Affirm multilingualism so it does not get disregarded, disowned, disrespected, discouraged. Center multilingualism so it doesn't disappear, so it is never disapproved, discounted, disputed, disguised, dismantled. Uplift multilingualism so it is discussed, disambiguated, discerned, displayed, discovered, and distinguished. Brandon: I have so many more questions, but I think that might be the perfect way to end. That's beautiful and exactly it. Now, before I let you go, there's two things. I'm going to break my protocol. One, you have to come back. Okay? And I because you have another book that's coming out that everyone's really excited about, "Wait, Don't Just Translate," and that's coming out in September. So that means you have to come back and we have to talk about that book. Fair? Yes. And when you come back, we have to talk to you about co-teaching. It feels silly that you're here and we're not talking about it. So we'll do both of those things upon your return. Andrea: Okay, thank you. Brandon: You're welcome. But before I let you go, we are in parallel process, right? Like we are constantly learning in a space where we are encouraging real intentionality around how learning takes shape. So what's something you're learning from right now or something you're learning about? Andrea: So, actually, this is my last year in higher education, and instead of retiring, I am rewiring. I learned that phrase from somebody. So I wanted to take this early retirement because of that desire to learn more, to travel more, to to write more, but again, bending the genres, writing creatively more. And and learning how to take on new roles in the profession as I finished my higher education career in August and start my early rewirement. Brandon: You are learning how to move into this new phase of you. Andrea: Yes. Brandon: Thank you so much. It has been an honor and a real pleasure and a joy to have you on the podcast with me today. And thank you everyone for listening to this episode. Thank you again for a great conversation. We'll see you next time on Leading Multilingual Learning, powered by Medly Learning.