This week's guest is the incredible educator, author and speaker Andrea Bitner. A true champion for kids, Bitner has 26 years of experience in public education. In her career she has instructed K–12 students from around the world, and today she serves as an English Language Learner educator in Philadelphia. She is the author of two books sharing powerful stories about EL students and educators: Take Me Home and When Niagara Falls. Andrea also co-authored The Impact of Influence – Volume 3: 100 No-Nonsense Things ALL School Leaders Should STOP Doing, and contributed to Culture First Classrooms and other works by Dr. Andrea Honigsfeld. Recognized by the state of Pennsylvania for her innovative teaching, she was featured in Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA)'s The Voice for her work with EL learners. A true dynamo in the space, she tirelessly provides a free newsletter to thousands of educators across the country each week, filled with tips, tricks, and resources for their teaching toolboxes.
Andrea: Being in the trenches, as we all say, is important for me. So I feel lucky that I get to, I say, dip my toes in both worlds, teach daily and have conversations nationally. And what I've found, honestly, is that our challenges are not that different. Oklahoma, Florida, Pennsylvania, or Connecticut, the challenges are often very much the same. Brandon: Hey everyone. Hola a todos. I'm Brandon Cardet-Hernandez and you're listening to Leading Multilingual Learning, powered by Medly Learning. As you know, each episode, we're exploring the leadership, the ideas, and the insights that are shaping better education for multilingual learners. And today, I'm excited to welcome my friend, Andrea Bittner. She's an incredible educator, an author, a speaker, and a true champion for kids. Brandon: With over 26 years in public education, Andrea has taught K-12 students from around the world, and she teaches daily today. We are excited to have a teacher with us. She is an English language learner educator in Philadelphia. She's the author of two books sharing powerful stories about EL students and educators: Take Me Home and When Niagara Falls. Andrea has also co-authored The Impact of Influence, Volume 3: 100 No-Nonsense Things All School Leaders Should Stop Doing, and contributed to Culture First Classrooms and other works by Andrea Hogginsfield, who we are about to have on the podcast very soon. Recognized by the state of Pennsylvania for her innovative teaching, she was featured in Penn State Ed's Association, PSEA, The Voice for her work with L learners. She also supplies a free newsletter to thousands of educators around the country each week to infuse tips, tricks, and resources into their teaching toolbox, a fantastic newsletter that folks should subscribe to as soon as they're done listening. Brandon: Andrea, welcome to the podcast. Andrea: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. Brandon: Actually, I do think you are our first guest who is still in the classroom every day with our kids. Andrea: Oh, wow. That's awesome. Brandon: And that makes me really happy. But as I shared, you're doing a lot of other stuff as well. You are leading from the ground all the way up. And so, you have this really impressive bio. We ask every single guest, what is one thing that never makes it into your bio that you're like, you know what, this doesn't get, this doesn't fit in there or it doesn't make sense inside of it, but I'm really proud of this particular thing that I've done? Andrea: When I think about that, I think about what doesn't make it into my bio is that I started out as a high school English teacher. Andrea: And I quickly learned that I was given most of the kids in the building who hated school. And the reason that they hated school was because they were high school freshmen who couldn't read. And that's really what kicked off my journey in education of being a lifelong learner. So I think what never really makes it into my bio is when I first started out, like many teachers feel, I had no idea what I was doing, because I didn't know how to teach kids how to read at that time. If I look back and think, what's not in there? That's one of the things that's not in there. I wasn't always an EL teacher. I started out at the high school level. Brandon: I love that. I also started off at the high school level. I started my career as a special education teacher, and I love that. It brings a different lens into the work. It makes us connect with kids in a different way. Brandon: I want to dig right in with you. So, I mentioned when I was reading your bio that you were featured in Pennsylvania State Education Association's The Voice for your work with L learners. But you've also received this really interesting grant from the Pennsylvania State Education Association as well. And I've had the unique pleasure of seeing your work up close in Interboro. So I know how intentional you are about building community for your L students. Tell us about the innovative teaching grant. What was the vision, and what did, what was the first thing that you did when you started designing and then implementing? Andrea: Yes, so when I'm thinking back, you know, a few years ago, we had written this grant because what we were noticing within our own building, because in my district we have four elementary buildings in four different towns, close together, but servicing grades one through eight along with a Kindergarten Academy. And we have a team of five EL teachers. And what we noticed at the time is that we had all these students in all these buildings, in addition to the high school, but none of them knew about each other. And we come from a district that has 31 different languages represented, and we thought to ourselves, how can we start to get intentional about connecting our kids, not just building-wide. We were all kind of doing our own thing within our own buildings to have different types of events through the year to, you know, show my second grader that speaks Mandarin that there's a sixth grader that speaks Mandarin, or show my first grader that speaks Twi that there's an eighth grader that speaks Twi, right? But how could we do that district-wide? Because a lot of times, our kids felt lonely. You know, they felt like, I'm the only Russian speaker. I'm the only Ukrainian speaker. There's no one else out there in this whole building of eight grade levels of kids who I can necessarily connect with. And so that was our motivation to write this grant. And PSEA had put out an opportunity called the Innovative Teaching Grant. And so what we did as a team was we sat down and we created this grant. And it was to expand the language lens beyond the halls and walls of just not only our buildings but our school community. And so what we wanted to do was connect our kids district-wide, number one. And number two, expose them to opportunities within the Interboro community to start to show them where they could take their families, because our kids in our district sometimes become quickly the readers and leaders of their families. They're in school being educated for free with, you know, ELD teachers, content area teachers, everybody on deck for years at a time, while Mom and Dad may have language proficiency, they may not, they may have some, but they're working. And so they don't get the opportunity for that free education. And so why not take that opportunity, we said, and bring our kids to local orchards, to bowling alleys, to theater experiences, to team-building experiences, etc. And so we did get awarded that grant, and that was the launching pad, let's say, for this initiative. And here we are years later, we've obtained other grants along the way because once the kids, you know, got a taste of, we do these four times a year at least, district-wide trips, that every year it's, what are the trips? What are the trips for the next year? But they've really forged connections within the district, and the kids look forward to seeing their new friends every time we go. Brandon: I love this idea of really intentionally building affinity for multilingual learners across a district. For, like, to really intentionally connect us, particularly when you might feel isolated as one of five or six or two or, you know, ten kids at a particular campus when there's other students with shared language experiences at another campus. What a thoughtful way of creating that bridge and that connection. So, so much of this work is rooted in taking these, like, big trips together where they're able to explore and experience the community around them. Tell me about the first trip. Like, where did you guys go? What did you do? Andrea: So our very first trip was, you know, from a teacher lens, probably one of the most stressful on our end because we, we intentionally segregated by grade levels. So we do K to 2, 3 to 5, sometimes 6 through 12, sometimes 7 through 12, 6 through 8. We kind of break them apart depending on where we're going. But the first trip that we took was to an orchard with our kindergarten students, first grade students, and second grade students. But we were smart enough, I want to say, to recruit high school students who also spoke the same first languages to come down and help us. Because as you know, when you take kindergartners anywhere, you just spend hours counting them. You know, you're just every five minutes. And so we went to a local orchard. The kids were exposed to a hayride through the orchard. They were exposed to picking pumpkins. They were exposed to seeing farm animals, so they got to see horses and pigs and cows and ducks and goats. And it was really awesome to see their eyes light up, to see them meeting other kids, speaking their first languages, having conversations, going back and authentically practicing their reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills in English, which is great, and then going back to the classrooms and writing about it. And so, we were able to put that together through the year and keep a concrete slideshow with photos and, you know, words from our students on the trips to report back to the grant organizations. But that was our very, very first trip that kind of kicked it off, and we still go back to the orchard every year. It also had a playground they could just play, you know, and have a great time. And something unexpected I also want to add that came out of that trip, which really clued us into what was happening, was cousins could go on trips together. And brothers and sisters were now on trips together. So that has become another conversation with our kids all the time. When they know a certain grade band is going, it's, 'Oh, I'll see my cousin,' 'Oh, my little sister's going.' So not only now are we providing our experiences for kids, but we're providing them for families. Brandon: Oh, that's really, really interesting. I didn't, I wasn't even thinking about that as as sort of one of the unintended impacts of this, is creating this opportunity for families to be together. What I also know is upon first blush, it's like, great, you got a grant and you're organizing these really intentional, smart field trips across the district. But it's much deeper than that. There's a peer mentoring component that's part of this. So, tell me how that was part of the design and, and not just peer mentoring, but near-peer mentoring, right? Like you, as you were talking about, you have these older students who are building connections with the younger students. The younger students are able to see where they go in the district, the journey of being a student in Interboro. Tell me a little bit about how you were thinking about the design of that and also a little bit about the impact as well. Andrea: Yes, so I'm a big fan of Ed Mylett and I listen to a lot of his podcasts, and I'll never forget, I heard him say one time, if you want to know about the road ahead, you ask the people coming back. And I really took that to heart in the sense of not only community experiences but utilizing our middle and high school students as true mentors and leaders to support the elementary students, or high school to support the middle school students, in sharing their experiences, their wisdom gained, sharing connection with what was just ahead of them. And so, in addition to the community experiences where we motivate our high school students to say, 'Hey, if you want to be one of the 10 to come down and take these students to X, you need to have C's or above in all your classes or you're not coming.' Like, we hold that line. You know, that's one opportunity there that was for motivational purposes. But something else that's one of my favorite experiences of the year is when we design a transition day for our eighth graders to go up to the high school. It's completely run by ourselves, the EL teacher at the high school, and the EL students at the high school to come say, 'Hey, come spend half a day in our building. We are going to present to you about what the high school is like, what activities you can join, what mistakes we made, why being bilingual is an asset, where that's going to take us in the future, and what's just ahead for you.' We tell our eighth graders, and this is just for eighth grade that we do this, all year long, you need to keep your grades up. We want to get you in honors classes. You want to play those sports, right? All the activities are waiting for you. Teachers can say it all day long, but it hits different when a senior says it. It hits different when a freshman from the year who was just ahead of them says it. And it's interesting when we go there, we do it every May, to watch them really lock in, to watch them sit down at tables, have round table conversations, get a tour of the building. It gets them excited, you know, to finish out the year strong. So, that's one way. Another way we got really intentional about utilizing mentorship was motivating our high school students to be able to come down to our offices and support our registration and our office team with registration in the summer. And so this was born not from us, but from a great relationship we have with our attendance team and our registration team at the central level. And they were like, 'Hey, why aren't we giving these guys volunteer credit hours? Why aren't we looking for opportunities to recognize the asset they have and allow them to support it right within their own schools?' And so we created a button on our registration page, and it says, 'If you would speak another language or would prefer any type of language support during your registration appointment this summer, click here.' And we've had some families, I just got an email today, who've already said yes, like 'I speak Arabic,' 'I speak Mandarin,' 'I speak Spanish, I'd love to have someone.' So then again, the EL teachers are recruiting students who are working towards the seal of biliteracy, students who are working towards our Spanish for native speaking class, who are coming out as certified translators at our high school level to come down and provide that leadership role for them. So I would say, you know, district-wide, our our kids are mentoring students and our kids are supporting offices. Brandon: I love this. I love the way that you framed it, too. It's like really creating opportunities for our students to experience their own asset. And so, these leadership moments are really helpful, right? Where they get to use that skill if they're comfortable using it in that way and and drive a support for their community, for a family, for a neighbor. I love this. And something that I think a lot of our listeners in their communities could really replicate. Are there other things that you think about that you've seen in the peer mentoring models that you're like, you know, you don't have to take the whole thing. You don't have to just do the trips or just do activity A or B or C, but these are things that we could all be thinking about and doing to create more experiences for our students to to lead? Andrea: I do. I think that really at the end of the day, what you want to consider as a school team is, how can you create bridges? You know, and it doesn't have to be grand gestures. You know, we do something as simple as bring-a-friend day, where our EL students at every level, once a quarter or once a semester, get to bring a student that's not in the program, that is a monolingual student, to our classroom to experience what our class is all about. And it really dispels the myths and misconceptions of, 'Why do you go to Ms. B's room?' You know, 'What what are you doing in there?' You know? And it also puffs the feathers of our EL students who are saying, 'Oh, because I speak multiple languages.' And then the friends are like, 'Oh, you do?' Because sometimes they don't share that. You know, sometimes they don't know. And so when they come to the room, it's a regular lesson, you know, engaging and fun. We do a lot of conversational pieces, a lot of, you know, listening and speaking activities, just to give the opportunity to, again, accentuate the program within the building, bridge it with other students, and give a sense of pride to our students that, you know, are a part of it. Brandon: Yeah, I love that, a bring-a-friend experience. Like honoring that you can sort of build that bridge between the what is sometimes an isolated ML space to the sort of general community. You're breaking down that wall. It's like, well, now we're just one community. Andrea: For sure. And the ML space can be very isolating. Not only for the students, but sometimes you're the only ML teacher in the building. And so it gives you an opportunity to meet other students in the building, to get to support them. We've also established, you know, intentional scholarships for our ML students at the high school level. We've established language clubs at the middle and high school level. So again, just keeping those bridges and opportunities to connect. Brandon: I think that's smart. I really like that. Brandon: I want to talk a little bit about your role outside of the classroom as well. So you, you're obviously a classroom teacher, but you've also published books and you're a national speaker. That's rare because so many of the voices we hear in the ML education space, they're coming from the university system, or they are coming from central office positions, superintendency, ML district leaders, etc. I think it's really powerful. It's what really excited me about meeting you and getting to know you. I think it's really powerful to hear from the classroom. What do you think you're able to offer that sometimes gets missed in the work when it, you know, when it's living in the ivory tower or even at the central office? Andrea: Being in the trenches, as we all say, is important for me because it allows me to keep a pulse on the needs, on the challenges, on the small wins, and the long-term progress that our teachers are making. It lets me continue to stay current with, you know, the trends in education, with the assessments that are constantly changing, with the conversations teachers are having. And so I feel lucky that I get to, I say, dip my toes in both worlds. I get to, you know, teach daily and work with students in grades, this year it was K to 8, and then supporting up at the high school on Fridays. And I get to have conversations nationally with supporting teachers. And what I've found, honestly, is that our challenges are not that different. You know, whether I am in Oklahoma, Florida, Pennsylvania, or Connecticut, the challenges are often very much the same. Brandon: Is there a question that you have found sort of keeps making its way to you when you're presenting or when you're leading? Something that that folks are grappling with nationally that you maybe even thought was like unique to Pennsylvania and you're like, wait, we're all, we're all sort of dealing with this. Andrea: You know, I think one of the the biggest challenges I see is the collaboration between content area teachers and ELD teachers. And just a lot of content area teachers still feeling unsure about how to accommodate successfully in the classroom. And a lot of ELD teachers who don't necessarily, how do I want to say this, they're not given all the tools in terms of times and resources to provide that support in a way that they feel effective. And at the end of the day, what I see is two groups of people who share the same goal, which is that they care. They care. Your content area teachers care. It's no fault of theirs that they've just never been trained or they've been trained in a minimal way. Your ELD teachers care, it's just that they have caseloads of sometimes hundreds of students and they wish they were octopuses with 15 arms throughout the day, but they can't be in all of those places to support so many levels of leaders, teachers, para-professionals, teaching, families, students, etc. And so you have a lot of people that care tremendously about our students, but they're also struggling with, how do I be effective in collaborating and getting together? Brandon: Oh, what a really thoughtful way of seeing an issue that you're right, like is a collective experience wherever we sit in the education spectrum. Listen, some of us are in communities where this is not the problem, but most of us, this makes its way into almost every conversation I have on the podcast. Most of us are really struggling with this dynamic, you know, of, how do I get my kids support in their content area and their content area classes? And how do I also make sure that those educators feel like they have the right training to do that work? And how do I make sure I'm not, you know, when I'm pushing in, I'm not just a para, right? That I am seen as a real instructional leader in that context. Andrea: Yeah, and there's so much value. And I, I put it when I talk to teachers, I put it in the frame of, you know, it takes two lenses to have one vision for an EL student. And that's the lens of the ELD teacher and the lens of the content teacher. And if you don't have one, your glasses don't work. And so it's important to be able to provide intentionally, you know, speaking to leaders, the time for those teachers to get together, and not just once a year, but throughout the year, because we tweak and adjust the plan as we go. Brandon: Yeah, absolutely. It's hard stuff. Brandon: Alright, I want to talk to you a little bit about your books, Take Me Home and When Niagara Falls. So, Take Me Home started with a tragedy, the loss of Nancy Lopez, a former student whose family you've been deeply connected to for years. Can you tell us a little bit about Nancy and how she became the seed for for that book? Andrea: I can. So, about a decade ago, I worked with about 40 students at Interboro High School with representation of about 25 different languages. And they came from all walks of life. I had kids who had crossed the border, I had kids who were refugee, I had adopted kids, I had kids that waited for visas 10 years and came after Mom and Dad, kids that came before Mom and Dad. We had exchange students, right? We had everybody. And Nancy happened to be one of those students who had crossed the border, and she happened to be from the country of El Salvador. And I've been to El Salvador myself three times and I've done a lot of cool things I've gotten to do with schools down there. And she was the only female in a family of seven children, all boys and one girl, and she was, as I mentioned, the youngest and only female. And so at the time of that tragedy where she had gone through our program called 'What's your plan? Be proud, be loud, be ambitious, never give up,' she had signed that classroom banner to say that she had completed this program along with her, you know, awesome classmates. At the same time as that was happening, I had other students in the classroom who were really experiencing a lot of myths and misconceptions in the community. For example, my students from Salvador and Ecuador and Guatemala and Honduras were coming into the classroom saying, 'Ms. B, like, why does everybody here keep calling me Mexican?' I'm not from there. I was born, you know, in Guatemala, or hey, I was born in Delaware, or I was born down the street. Like, I don't know anyone from there. Or I had other kids coming in from countries in Africa, like Kenya and Rwanda and Benin, and and they were saying, 'Ms. B, everybody here keeps asking me if I live with lions.' And they were like, 'I didn't live with lions. I went to a private boarding school in a city.' You know? And then we had other kids from Lebanon and Taiwan and China, and they were bringing in different foods, right? Or bringing in different religious information, or wearing different things to represent different holidays, and people were making fun of them. So while the tragedy of Nancy's passing, and as I mentioned in the introduction of the book, was happening, at the same time those things were happening. And I saw an opportunity to start to really dispel the myth and misconception that lies behind, what does the label English learner mean? Because they're not all the same. Brandon: Amen. Andrea: Those two experiences, kind of woven together, created Take Me Home. It's the true story of 11 of my students who share what it was like to become bilingual in America. When I interviewed them, they were in their late 20s, early 30s, and we created it from almost every continent, every country we could think of. It's told through their eyes in the first person, and Nancy's story is woven through those chapters. Brandon: What's something that you learned when you were working on the book? Andrea: You know, the conversations that I had with these young adults, and I'm now starting to teach their children, which is wild... but yes, full circle for me, is that they wanted teachers to know that lack of language doesn't equal lack of intelligence. And they wanted teachers to know when you meet an English learner for the first time, behind them sits a family who may also be learning English. And that they're doing their very best to send the student to school each day ready to learn at their best for you. And what I learned was that what I defined as my best with my own children doesn't necessarily mean that's the best of everyone. And so I had to redefine what normal is. And you know, and really be open to the idea that everybody's normal is completely different and we teach to our best who shows up that day. Those conversations were important and it really just reaffirmed for me the importance of amplifying their student voices because they were the kids that, I don't know, I always say I get the best kids in the building. I think our our multilingual learners are the best kids in the building, but they're also not the kids that always amplify their own voice. Brandon: Yeah. Well, what an incredibly empowering opportunity to get to reclaim our own stories, right? To get to have someone like you who wants to hear about that experience and then share that so broadly. So thank you from all of us. Brandon: I'm curious from you, in your book When Niagara Falls, you decide to tell this from both the student's perspective—that's really clearly important to you—but also the teacher's perspective. Tell us a little bit about that book and why was it so important to show both sides? What does it say about the relationship between an EL student and the teacher who, you know, refuses to give up on them? Andrea: Yes, so after going into my 27th year now in education, I've been lucky enough to get to witness both sides of the coin often, because 20 of my 27 years, I've lived in the support world. I don't know any other world at this point. I've always worked with K to 12 teachers and K to 12 students in the support position of supporting both parties, right? And so I have this one particular student who is now currently in high school, and in the book I name her Niagara. And I've gotten the luxury to work with her and her family since second grade. And she's now in high school, and I've watched her go through all the highs and the lows and the pitfalls and everything in between of going through the school process of not only becoming bilingual, but also life in general. And so in When Niagara Falls, we tell a true story in the beginning with illustrations of Niagara. And what I tell people when they say, 'Well, what's it about?' I say, 'Well, it's a true story of a young girl that learns that being resilient means learning how to ask for help.' And it took us six years to get her to ask for help. And although we knew she needed the help, we had to wait for her to come full circle socially, developmentally, academically, etc. to realize that the help could benefit her. And so in the middle of the the book are some poems that are based on the perspective of the teacher and the student because I often feel that there is a miscommunication there sometimes in what the student is looking for and their assets and what the teacher needs and their assets, and so they struggle with each other. And I wanted to open up that perspective with poems like Being Tough is Not Enough and poems like The Door to More and poems like When Niagara Falls. And that flew into a thank you section at the end for teachers because I feel like I have the perspective of every grade level along the way. And I actually tried these pieces out on teachers in all different grade levels before I ever decided to put them in the book, where I wrote a thank you letter as the elementary teacher, as the middle school teacher, and as the high school teacher. And as far as I can tell and with the great feedback I've received so far, they are hitting the mark on the experiences of these teachers. So yes, it was important for me to try and encompass both sides. Brandon: And it is hitting the mark. I really appreciated the way you told that story and then really mixed in those voices. I think it speaks a lot to who you are. Brandon: I have one final question that I do think is important because you've built something amazing beyond the classroom. Obviously, we've talked about your work presenting, we've talked about the books, and we've obviously, you know, we've talked about the impact that you have on the ground every day. You also have this weekly newsletter, which is a real joy to get to read, and you can tell you put a lot of heart and soul into making it accessible. And also, you are a busy person, and getting it out every single week so that folks can really have that consistency with you and your voice. Tell me a little bit about how that evolved and also, like, how do you take that work back into your own practice? Like, I don't know, teaching is such a learning experience. I'm curious how you think about that sort of professional development that you're leading, how that impacts the work that you do every day. Andrea: I think that in our profession, if you stop learning, you're dead in the water. I wanted to really create something that again was based on the perspective of someone that was right, I always say, around the country, like I'm teaching right alongside of you, literally. We may be near or far, but we are, you know, in it together. I wanted to provide tips, tricks, resources, inspiration, and so you'll find that the newsletter was motivated by, I guess, some things that I needed. If I think back to my, you know, start of my career, I'm kind of fulfilling what I needed when I first started. It was like, I need some inspiration, somebody to keep me going. I need tips and tricks. I need, you know, what's been working for you. I need exposure to resources because in education, especially with EL teachers, or every state's different, ML teacher, EL, etc., whatever you want to call it, a lot of us are in a sense of island living. You know, you might be the only ML teacher in your building or you might be one of like two across the district that travels all the time. I mean, I've heard from people in Montana, one teacher has 11 schools. You know, and it's like, so you really feel isolated. So I, I guess I'm a big bridge maker. I wanted to find a way to bridge EL teachers across the country, which I'm excited that it continues to grow and we're doing that. I wanted to provide real things, like that they could use tomorrow. We are in a a decade of convenience. I want to be able to click on the link, I want to be able to watch the video, I want to be able to listen to the podcast, like immediacy, right? And so I tried to just put something in there each week, and that's what I think I would have needed when I first started, that goes along those lines. Like, here are real things, here's some inspiration, and just the encouragement. Like, keep going because our field doesn't always have people daily. They're not always the first priority, sometimes they're the last, to tell them that the work that they do matters. Brandon: Thank you for that. And it, one, it does matter, you are right, but also you as that bridge builder, you really matter, too, because we need people like you who are making those connections and and lifting up the community and the work and the practice. So, thank you. I really see you and I'm grateful for you. Andrea: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Brandon: Oh, it's been a blast. Before I let you go, there's two things. One is the question we always end with. We actually were just talking about learning, how you are leading learning. What's something or someone you're learning from right now? Andrea: So, I've been reading a lot lately. And so one thing I've been reading is Dr. Zaretta Hammond's Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, in love with the book, just taking notes furiously, and so that's something I've really been, you know, constantly honing my craft and learning about. So I would say that would be one. And the other book I'm reading, like, not professionally speaking, but personally speaking is, if you're looking for just something that kind of has you laughing out loud and because I think I'm learning how to take breaks sometimes, is is Amy Schumer's biography. Which is hilarious, and so I've been learning a lot from her as well. Brandon: I love this. Yeah, we can hold these dualities. We can have a fun giggle and take a break from the work and also lean in and stay focused on how to do culturally responsive work. So I love that you are doing both. Andrea: Thank you. Brandon: Andrea, before I let you go, thank you, thank you again for your time. And where can people find you if they want to get in touch or learn more about what you do? Andrea: Oh, I would love that. So you can visit my website, which is andreabittnerbooks.com. So I'm active there. And you can also find me on LinkedIn at Bittner Andrea. So they would probably be the two easiest places to reach out. Brandon: Awesome. Well, I'm really grateful for this conversation. Thanks, everyone, for listening to this episode of Leading Multilingual Learning. And thank you, Andrea, for a really great conversation. We'll see you next time on Leading Multilingual Learning, powered by Medly Learning.