Today we welcome on two very distinguished guests. Mario Palma is the founder of Palma Multilingual Educational Solutions and a former Vice President of Multilingual Teaching & Learning at American Reading Company. He has 25+ years of experience across public health and public education, starting as a bilingual teacher in New York City and moving into national-level work helping districts design and strengthen ESL, bilingual, and dual language programs. Jordan Montalvo works alongside Mario as the Director of Research and Innovation at Palma Multilingual Educational Solutions. She is also an instructor at Western Washington University, supporting incoming bilingual teachers. She previously worked at Amplify, supporting their dual language education and curriculum development. Jordan has taught in self-contained dual language and early elementary ELL classrooms and served as a Dual Language Program Facilitator in Everett Public Schools.
Jordan: In our work, we center the child's experience as a holistic being, and they should experience school from that perspective. Jordan: Bilingual students come with assets that we haven't tapped into. When we are teaching two separate literacy blocks with a curricula that was meant for something completely in English or something completely in Spanish, because we still aren't seeing enough curricula walking that bridge across and ensuring that it's designed that way. We're seeing progressions that are authentic, but not instruction that's authentic to that student. We're missing that bilingual aspect of it. Brandon: Hey everyone. ¡Hola a todos! I'm Brandon Cardet-Hernandez, and you're listening to Leading Multilingual Learning, powered by Medley Learning. Each episode, we're exploring the leadership, the ideas, and the insights shaping better education for multilingual learners. Brandon: And today, I'm excited to welcome Mario Palma and Jordan Montalvo to the show. We're going to be talking about bilingual education, those early foundational skills, and there's no one better to do it with. So, Mario is the founder of Palma Multilingual Educational Solutions, is a former Vice President of Multilingual Teaching and Learning at American Reading Company. He has 25 years of experience across public health and public education, starting his career as a bilingual teacher in New York City and moving into national-level work, helping districts design and strengthen ESL, bilingual, and dual language programs. And Jordan works with Mario as the Director of Research and Innovation at Palma Multilingual Educational Solutions. She's also an instructor at Western Washington University, supporting incoming bilingual teachers. She's worked at Amplify, supporting their language, education, and curriculum development. She's taught in self-contained dual language and early elementary classrooms and served as a dual language program facilitator in Everett Public Schools. There is a lot there and welcome both of you to the show. Mario: Thank you, Brandon. Jordan: Thank you. Pleasure. Brandon: Okay. So, Jordan, I'm going to start with you. Whenever we have a guest on the show, we have these succinct paragraph bios about who we are, but so much is left out. So what is one thing that never makes it onto your bio? Jordan: My bio, I feel like there was a lot of, a lot of words in that bio and what I what I hope that is captured with my heart in the work is just that I'm here in all the spaces that I choose to be in because of students. And because of students at the heart of the work, and in service of teachers and making sure that we don't have teacher burnout and teachers that are in the classroom serving students for the right reasons to uplift and empower their bilingualism, their positive multilingual identities, all of that is at the center of every element of education that I find myself in, and I can't find myself going fast enough to be able to ensure that we have the right voices, the right people in the right rooms to be able to influence education and make sure that we're uplifting kids. So, that's more of what I think my bio wants to say versus all of the places I've been or the places I go. Brandon: I see you, Jordan. Brandon: All right, Mario, your turn. What's something that's missing you wish more people knew about you? Mario: I mean, it's really interesting to hear every time I hear my bio read aloud, it's like, who is this person? Have I really done all these things? It's just kind of cool to reflect on that path that I've been granted by the universe to be here in conversación with you two today. But I guess what I would add is that I approach the work that I do, the work that Jordan and I do, with these multiple perspectives. First, I say I come to you as a teacher, first and foremost, that has been in the trenches, that has tried to reconcile what I know about myself as a bilingual person versus what materials I'm being asked to promote literacy in my classroom through. So first and foremost as a teacher. And then I also say that I come to you as a guardian, a parent, who I co-parent my nephew, Johnny, with my sister, and was kind of thrust into that world during the pandemic and understanding what it takes as far as the parenting piece, right? The guardianship piece of adults who are entrusting us with their children. I want to acknowledge that as well. And then lastly, as a bilingual person that is flawed and beautiful and perfect in so many different ways, very, very connected to my indigenous roots and believe strongly in being able to look backwards in order to have clarity moving forwards, and that real unique balance of knowing where you, where you're from to know where you're going. And so I try to bring that element of authenticity, of being a bilingual person, to the work that I do every day. Brandon: I appreciated that perspective from both of you. You're the first folks who took this challenge on and did like, 'I'm going to do bio clarification. I'm going to give you a little bit more of my heart and my soul' and I love that lens. So thank you. Brandon: Tell us a little bit, high level, what does Palma Multilingual Educational Solutions do? Who are you guys? Tell me a little bit about the work and then I want to dive in and get to know both of you better. Mario: Yeah, I would say first and foremost, we're a team of teacher education researchers. We're really trying to make sure that teachers have the professional development opportunities available to them that they deserve, that will inevitably impact instruction and biliteracy growth with students. We are niche in our focus in that we are strategically trying to address the needs for multilingual learners in the United States. I often begin conversations about Palma Solutions with this quote, that we believe that multilingual learners are our country's most untapped natural resource. We have yet to even graze the surface as far as what this multilingual community of students has to offer. And so kind of leaning into that is really the purpose behind every decision we make and every partnership that we acquire. You know, we're strong believers in biliteracy instruction regardless of program model, right? Because you can have elements of biliteracy instruction in ESL, ESOL, or your more traditional transitional bilingual or dual language settings. And so we try to synthesize the research that's out there into practical systems change and classroom level instructional work. Brandon: I love that. You're my kind of people. All right, let's dive in and talk a little bit more. And speaking of research, Jordan, I want to talk to you a little bit. I've read that you've described your current work as critically analyzing and redesigning foundational skills instructional approaches that reflect holistic biliteracy pedagogy. That's a lot of words there. So tell me a little bit about what that means to you, but also what's wrong with the way foundational skills are typically taught in dual language classrooms right now? What are you seeing and what are you trying to change? Jordan: Great question. I think I'll start with what's going well and then maybe what's wrong, so because there's always, there's good and bad in the field. We always do better when we know better, and so we're always watching for that progression. We've seen that over the past decade, there's definitely been an increase in dual language classrooms when we're talking about analyzing, redesigning foundational skills. In dual language classrooms, there's definitely been more authentic progressions of foundational skills coming out through curriculum companies. We've seen that increase versus a translated English approach or not including it at all and hoping that districts find something that they can utilize as their base that's more remedial. We're now seeing high-quality curricula, which is really helpful. It's a really great place to start from. But what we're noticing in classrooms still is that there's two isolated programs occurring. And there's a lot of reasons for that, and sometimes it's financial from curriculum companies, sometimes it's from lack of guidance still or understanding at the district systems level of what to do with this curricula to ensure that instruction really looks the way that it can and should to elevate the students. But we're still seeing that there's this need for fidelity within a curriculum, but it's like two parallel lines, two parallel tracks going on. And that's unfortunate because we really, in our work, what we will always say is that we center the child's experience as a holistic being, and they should experience school from that perspective. Bilingual students, they come with assets that, like Mario said, we haven't tapped into. And so when we are teaching two separate literacy blocks with a curricula that was meant for something completely in English or something completely in Spanish, because we still aren't seeing enough curricula walking that bridge across and ensuring that it's designed that way, we're seeing progressions that are authentic, but not instruction that's authentic to that student. So we're missing that bilingual aspect of it. So we're seeing a lot of classrooms that, you know, they'll be teaching UFLI in English in a classroom, and then they'll be teaching a completely different curriculum, whether it's Aprendo Leyendo or Estrellita or Caminos de la lectoescritura in Spanish, and they're never talking to one another. And so for a student, that can be really redundant. Not the best way to teach. And so what we want to do is shift to really leaning into the power of what Spanish brings. Spanish is a foundation of a transparent orthography that we can push faster and further in a concrete to complex way that moves into morphology earlier, and then based on program design and the program model that is hopefully clear in a district, layer in the English really intentionally to capitalize on what students already know. We don't need to teach something twice. Brandon: I love that. Mario, help me understand, you know, from your work with bilingual and dual language programs across the country, when you look at how foundational skills are being taught across programs, where do you see the biggest gap and where's the greatest opportunity? Mario: Yeah, I mean, we understand that districts are well-meaning and underscore the importance of developing bilingual programs for their communities, and they're trying to get systems for foundational literacy done right. And so often we find that funding resources and decisions are structurally tied to individuals who make decisions for district-wide ELA curriculum concerns, and depending on their acknowledgement of both the expertise that they may have, but also the blind spots that they may carry, those decisions can either be informed or less informed. And so what we're seeing is that those who are in charge of funding decisions are able to tap into perhaps other educators or other stakeholders in their districts who maybe have those sources of knowledge about how to make more strategic and informed decisions about the materials that you're using, perhaps around the more authentic approaches to Spanish foundational literacy as opposed to over-using English methodologies. You know, all of those traditional blind spots operating from a monolingual perspectives may or may not see. So we're trying to be able to tap into that gap, that need, and provide more guidance to be able to make more responsible and informed choices. Brandon: You know, it's really interesting to hear this approach, particularly in this moment where we are inundated with conversations about the science of reading, and a really positive way. Like we need to get some things right when a third of American children are reading on grade level. You know, and that has reshaped how we think about early literacy instruction in English. There's slowly and emerging universal agreement, at least for English, on how we teach young people to read, those foundational skills we're talking about. But that research, as we know, is largely monolingual. So what happens when districts apply those frameworks directly to bilingual programs without adaptation? What's the move you want to see district leaders making or at least starting to think about as they go down this road? Mario: You know, this is kind of like a continuum. So if you are at the earlier end of the spectrum where there's more opportunity for growth, you're probably seeing districts that are using a monolingual curricula that they're asking bilingual teachers to translate. That's kind of like the most extreme version of what we've seen. For those districts that are more informed and perhaps have more of a parity-based approach where they're providing curricula that's available in both partner languages, is better, right? Because you have an authentic English and an authentic Spanish-designed curriculum. But as Jordan said, there may be redundancy and a lack of speaking of those two curricula together. So that would be kind of one step towards more educational equity, but still more work to do. As far as being able to make those connections critical, right, and engaging what Ofelia García says is more of a translanguaging theoretical approach, you know, finding the overlap to build in systems so that the curricula, these two curricula, which would otherwise be considered two parallel monolingual tracks, to speak to one another in a more coherent way. Often assessments are monolingually designed, the data that comes from these monolingual assessments are only assessed within a monolingual lens, and so there's a whole part of the child that is not considered in this idea of holistically assessing what they can do. We want to be able to measure both what they call general linguistic performance, right? What this child is able to do across languages, and language-specific performance, right? So that would require not just curriculum but assessments that are designed authentically within each language but also can be assessed holistically to be able to determine what the child can do in their totality. And then when you're talking about instruction, that's kind of like the meat and potatoes, right? Like how do you mobilize all of the wonderful instructional procedures and methods that we know work for language acquisition and really engaging what we call a language and literacy integrated approach, where teachers are not just teaching word-level decoding skills but understand, you know, if we're engaging Claude Goldenberg's and Casillas's work on the Reading Rope with a more authentic language development lens, you know, how do we find ways to incorporate language comprehension supports with word recognition instruction? You know, there are a myriad ways that we can support districts in being able to push them along that continuum of equity. First, it begins with this culture of wanting to do better and know better, to begin with. Brandon: Building on that, and I'm very mindful, and this is my time as a school leader as well, that sometimes we're using these words and it's with folks who are doing the work and we think we're all in agreement on understanding what they mean, and I think there's a shame that happens for a lot of us where we're like, well now I've been doing this too long, like I can't ask what this means anymore. And so the wheels keep spinning and it keeps getting further away from you. You talk about this holistic approach, and I'm with you, this holistic approach to bilingual foundational skills. Help me understand what you mean when you say that and what does it look like in practice? Like if I, Brandon Mariño Cardet-Hernandez, walk into a classroom tomorrow, what do I see that's different from a classroom using translated English approach? Like what should I see in that classroom? What am I looking for? Mario: Well, let's define what we mean by holistic bilingualism, and this is largely based on the work by Biliteracy Squared, Kathy Escamilla's team. So, holistic bilingualism essentially is an approach that reflects what Kathy says is the ontology, or the way that bilingual people walk through, interpret, and make sense of the world. And so holistic bilingualism has so many different ways to manifest across curriculum, instruction, and assessment, but specifically around foundational skills instruction, it views language acquisition as a dynamic process which is mutually reinforcing through bidirectional transfer, affirming the value of one's entire linguistic repertoire, and draws on the research specifically done on the bilingual brain. You know, we feel that holistic foundational literacy skills are the biliteracy building blocks of learners who are becoming literate in two or more languages, and that this instruction includes phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, metalinguistic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, oracy development, and most importantly, bilingual identity. You know, a holistic foundational skills approach is one that is based on the intersection of the science of reading research, translanguaging research, and transfer-based pedagogical theory. So it ensures the provision of instructional experiences that normalize and center bilingualism and the bilingual identity. We are firm believers in that, yeah. Brandon: I see that. Jordan: Walk me through. I'm a teacher. What am I seeing? Jordan: I can't wait to share. We're with teachers all the time. For the past 15 years, I've been in classrooms where we're cultivating this, and it's evolved over time. But the first thing whenever I'm in a classroom that I know that has begun this journey of holistic biliteracy and really embraced it is first and foremost, joy. There's joy in the classroom because you can feel it from the students. There's this positive bilingual identity that is going on in the classroom, this level of inquiry that I've never seen. Students are pattern seekers and they are looking for what's something that's similar, what's something different. They're the ones naming it, they're the ones seeing it all the time. And so you can just, there's this, you walk in and you're like, "Whoa, something's different about the way that students are running this classroom," versus the teacher providing information, students are asking and eager for more answers to the questions they have about what's similar and different. The second thing that I always see when I walk into a classroom is the use of wall space is really intentional. So when we see holistic biliteracy in place, we see that there's language-rich wall space being utilized for this contrastive analysis, for students to be able to see words that match a pattern across languages or something that's different between languages, so they can use it as a resource in their writing, in their ability to add to later on. It's not just teacher-created charts, it's definitely co-created and student-generated eventually. And that is really clear when we walk in. But then occurring in the classroom, what, like I mentioned before, students are having these moments. That's incidental cross-linguistic transfer moments occurring all the time, and it's the teacher that chooses to elevate it. We don't need to make a huge moment out of it, but at least take a moment to say, "That's a really important connection you're making. Let me clarify maybe if it's an approximation," but making those moments elevated in the classroom. And then there's also teachers creating space. So whether it's making intentional choices in their instruction to pause and say in the middle of, like I'll give an example, in the middle of a dictado lesson, when I'm teaching the dictado and todo está en español, pero cuando llego a la palabra jirafa, I'm going to pause and point to the bilingual alphabet that I have on the wall and say, "The 'j' de jirafa, what in English, what is it? What's that sound that it makes? Is it the same? No, it's not. What is it? 'Juh.'" Great, moving on. And then we keep going so that students have that moment, but then also a lesson. So there's small moments and then there's also bigger moments. So different from concurrent translation, which is something we'll see sometimes and then that's when we pause and have a conversation and say, "What's the barrier that you're facing that you're thinking you should do concurrent translation? How can we integrate more language acquisition into this classroom so that we're teaching literacy and language, but then using our moment strategically for transfer, not translation?" So that's, those are moments. And then when we're really on this progression towards holistic biliteracy in foundational skills specifically, we're going to see actual lessons where teachers are taking the time to do deeper contrastive analysis. And Mario and I have seen this in a couple different ways. We've modeled this in different ways where the teacher's leading a lesson, where we're contrasting the vowel sounds, so that we can go with what's known to what's unknown, what's transferable to non-transferable. So making space for naming the transfer, and then engaging in like center work or sorting cognate cards that have the same initial letter sound, being able to take a lesson from a dictado that was done in Spanish and do some 'así se dice' work where we transfer it to English and talk about the word order that's different and being able to make space for that. Mario: I don't know, Mario, if you have more examples then of the work we've done. I mean, it's a clear example of, a big part of our work is redefining with bilingual educators what we mean by tier one instruction because your traditional viewpoint of what tier one should include doesn't necessarily include metalinguistic awareness. And so we want to be able to make sure that that is a pillar, a cornerstone of the way that you approach bilingual education, but it requires deep content knowledge about not just the internal structures of the partner languages that are part of your bilingual program, but how they relate and contrast to one another. So understanding what we mean by language subsystems, like what's the sound system of each of your partner languages? What's the spelling system, the word chunk or morphology meaning system? All of that is an important first step in developing teacher capacity so that you can see all the wonderful things that Jordan described when you go into what we would like to see as a typical bilingual experience, not the exception. Brandon: Of course. And we've been talking about this cross-linguistic transfer. It's a big concept of your work. It is foundational to how we're talking about bilingual education. This idea that what students know in one language supports their learning in the other. But you have both said in different moments right now, like this has to be taught explicitly. Like this is a skill that needs to, that we develop as bilingual people. What does that explicit instruction look like? Walk me through a little bit more, like how do I start thinking through that lens as an educator first, and then how does that trickle down to the student experience? Mario: I mean, essentially it has to be baked in by design, first and foremost. So that is one of the reasons why we support districts with developing what we call a holistic scope and sequence, because then that creates the pathway with the understanding that the goal is not just to learn how to read in two languages, it's also to understand how the languages operate in conjunction with one another. You know, all of the research shows that if you are supporting metalinguistic awareness and cross-linguistic transfer, it directly impacts academic growth. So the research is clear. But as far as being able to start with a pathway, I think developing what we call a holistic foundational skill scope and sequence is the first step, right? So understanding what a natural progression of foundational skills is in Spanish versus in English, and then systematically creating opportunities, whether it be within each daily lesson or a pause point at the end of the week. You know, we want to make sure that when students are learning the code in their two partner languages, that they're also bringing those languages together and studying, you know, do the sound, are the sounds the same across languages? What sounds exist in Spanish that don't exist in English and vice versa? Do we have the same letters that represent a sound that is available in two languages, and it may be a different grapheme or a different letter that represents that sound? And so all of that work needs to be baked in by design with the scope and sequence. And then once you have a scope and sequence, then you can start to design these experiences both within and across languages. Jordan: Mario, I don't know if we should if we could go through kind of what we mean by a transfer lesson and what those steps are. And so I think I'll let Mario kind of take it from this initial launch, but I mean, we want to name the space. For teachers to build this consistency and routine of cross-linguistic transfer, we need to name that we're entering this translanguaging and cross-linguistic transfer space because we do want that authentic to the language instruction occurring. We want teachers to have this linguistically robust literacy instruction in a language. And then we have moments, and then we have spaces for transfer work. So name the space, in whatever way that is. We see teachers with like chants for, you know, a bilingual chant that they move it into. There's, we've seen teachers actually create these little bridges that students are going to get ready to walk across so that they're entering the space of bridging the two languages. And then we need to name what's been studied. So as long as there's been routine in place, we can open more cognitive space for the skill being learned. So if we know that the skill has been taught in one language really well, then we enter the space of the transfer and then say, "This is what we've learned, let's review that." And now let's talk about what's similar, what's different. Let's have that time to talk through it and really navigate and negotiate, look at a couple examples, do some annotating and analysis, and then moving it to the other language. Mario, do you want to take it from there? Mario: We have an idea of what steps need to be covered within, let's say, a 30-minute transfer lesson, dividing it into three steps. So perhaps it's activate, then analyze, then extend. The activate, which would be the first maybe four to five minutes, is to reinforce the value of bilingualism and development of metalinguistic awareness, like the why behind what we're doing, and then activating prior knowledge of whatever the content is in the context of what we're studying in what we call language X, whatever language you're starting from. And then transitioning from activating the why and the what to the how, analyzing what are the similarities and differences between these two cognates in terms of their initial letter sound or perhaps a morphological chunk that we know creates the present progressive version of a verb, and then placing those languages strategically side-by-side to be able to guide students through that analysis that also follows a gradual release. And then as a finalizing what that lesson might be like is probably extending, right? So moving from LX to LX and LY, and then ending with LY. Now that we've seen this pattern that either exists or doesn't exist across languages, what are some other examples in our partner language that we can generate with partners or in strategic groups? But this all has to follow some of the work that many of our listeners, I'm sure know, of Perfetti, who came up with this idea of lexical quality. And so even though you're analyzing two cognates and perhaps they begin with a consonant that transfers, let's say letter M cognates, it can't just stay at the phonological or orthographic level. There has to be a more comprehensive approach that includes semantics, right? So you're using vocabulary and language as the point of departure for your cross-linguistic analysis and making sure that students understand the sound system, spelling system, morphological system, and ultimately the syntax and grammar of the word as well. So there's a lot of moving parts to a typical transfer lesson, and I think that those are some of the things we want to consider, and what frequency do we want to be able to transfer at? How does that relate to the age of the child, the grade level, the amount of content that we're learning? There's a lot of decisions that have to be made, but we're just grateful for districts who contact us knowing that this is the way they need to move forward. That's a great opportunity for all of us. Brandon: I love that and so, you know, so good for our kids and I think so many of us who are bilingual in the US sometimes find ourselves here despite the school system. Like we've really had to work hard to maintain and not in partnership with. And so I love the idea of really building capacity for educators, but also helping district leaders and school leaders think through their approach. Like what are the systematic moves we have to make? It's one thing to hang up the flag and say we're a bilingual program, and then there's another thing to really get serious about the pedagogy behind the method and to lean in, develop people, and then obviously execute strong pedagogy. And I could chat with you all day about how we teach phonics and decoding in Spanish rather than just mirroring the English sequence, but I have so many more questions to get to, so I'm going to keep us moving. I'm curious for you, and this is thinking about some of our listeners who are either continuing to develop their own bilingual program or having the fantasy that so many of us have, which is to build one in our own community. So holistic bilingual foundational skills, they have to live through the whole ecosystem rather than just one teacher's classroom, right? It's not just a place, it's an entire way of experiencing school. Brandon: And Mario, for you, when you work with districts to implement this, what are the system-level pieces that have to be in place for a holistic bilingual foundational program and those skills to really work? What's, what are you looking for when you're like, "Okay, we're ready to do this work together"? Mario: Yeah, so our work with building-level and district-level educators and leaders is really centered on this idea of monitoring the quality of instruction that anchors bilingual foundational literacy. So a part of that is being able to inspect what you expect, right? You want to be able to have some type of communication loop and some type of learning walk system where you're actively going into classrooms to observe teachers to be able to provide them biliteracy feedback. Are they using research-based approaches to be able to engage orthographic and morphological mapping? Are they understanding the steps in a typical transfer-based instructional lesson? Do they know how to scaffold within language using comprehensible input and output methods to avoid the concurrent translation manifestation, which undoes a lot of the bilingual goals that we have in our program to begin with? So I think that system as far as monitoring tier one instruction is probably one of the most important systems that we want to create. But that's also assuming that teachers are on the back end receiving the kind of professional development that they're expected to apply in their classroom settings. So building in a professional development plan for teachers to understand the research behind language acquisition, the research with multilingual learners, and the science of reading, which is actually a lot more robust than many people are aware of. The research on science of reading is international. It's not just specific to the United States and so it's worthy of looking at research that's been done in Spanish-speaking countries and other countries as far as how they approach a science of reading and then really curating the right kinds of readings so that teachers are aware of not just what to do but why they're doing it in the classroom. And I would say lastly, leader education. Understanding what leaders of bilingual programs need to be able to know, kind of like a bird's eye view as far as what to expect when going into the classroom and how to provide those professional development opportunities. So that's where I would start. Jordan, do you want to add anything? Jordan: I'm passionate about this type of work because when we work with teachers, teachers come on the side, always chatting with us and teacher to teacher saying, "I really want to do this work, but I just don't know if my leadership is supporting it. And I really want to do this work, but do I have the backing of the person that's evaluating me?" And so it always comes down to the systems that are behind what the teacher is feeling empowered or disempowered to do. And so I love the idea of having clarity for teachers. And Mario talked about the underpinnings behind, we need to make sure that we've got professional development plans in place, making sure that all of our teachers have clarity on what the expectations are and have had the capacity building, the professional learning to back it. I always think about when I talk with teachers, I'm always saying, "You need rationale behind what you're doing." So do you understand the research, the choices you're making and why you're making them? And then we want to work with administrators and the district leaders and the superintendent, have them all come in the room for this professional learning so that we're all on the same page and that there's these systems in place for this to feel positive for teachers and ultimately, obviously, for students, right? We want students to have this experience, but teachers will either shut their door or they'll keep it open and we want them to be able to keep that open so that there's a collaborative effort in this. Mario: In the last training that we just did in Illinois, we were very strategic about who was going to be in the room. And that although we do want to focus on teacher capacity building, there's supposed to be a network of support that is an active participant in the work. So we had the assistant soup of curriculum and instruction, we had bilingual directors, we had ESL teachers, we had classroom teachers, we had building leaders. And it was a very delicate design to be able to free up all of those very important people, but like, are they speaking to one another? And the fact that the assistant soup was breaking words into syllabic chunks was like a moment for us, you know? Because I think that that's the kind of work that communicates that, "I'm in this with you," to teachers. The secret sauce is leadership, right? So if I'm a teacher and I see my principal is just as engaged and dedicated to us moving in the right direction, then I feel like, okay, I don't have to hide what I know is right or be penalized perhaps for what I know is right, right? Because all stakeholders are part of that professional development by design. Brandon: I think for a lot of us, particularly folks on the ground, there's this vulnerability in doing something new pedagogically. And particularly in bilingualism for a lot of us, because it might just not be the way we were taught. And we see this for teachers who are monolingual and they're teaching the science of reading and they're like, "I didn't learn to read this way," or "I don't remember this." So there's this incredible vulnerability as they're like publicly playing with phonemes and getting it wrong sometimes and realizing like, "I'm not really clear on what a long vowel sounds like, but I'm supposed to," so there's this tension. And this is all deeply true as we're doing this work in for some of us in a language that we grew up speaking but maybe didn't have formal education in. I think there's something really powerful about seeing your leadership get it wrong and grapple with something and be uncomfortable. There's the power in of that that I think we sometimes miss that it's like, it's not just "you're in it with us," but "you're in it with us," which is the public humiliation of it, the grow zones, the success, the failures, all the things we sort of forget that we're asking teachers to do all the time. Like show up and get it right, and then show up and get it wrong a lot too. Mario: We get districts that ask us to do PD completely in Spanish, you know, to really change the power dynamic or hierarchy, if you will, of how language operates in any particular professional development setting. And so, you know, to add a level of discomfort or putting a leader that is a monolingual ally in the shoes, right, in the place of a multilingual learner, what they're expected to do every single day is a really powerful experience for our monolingual allies to engage in. So we, you know, we get the gamut of requests in that regard. Brandon: I love that. Brandon: Good. I'm like, I hope our folks who are listening are thinking about that. Like how do we create that same tension in our own professional learning that kids are experiencing every single day in the classroom? How do we find ourselves in parallel process with them? That for me is the yummiest part of developing adults but teaching and learning generally. Brandon: Jordan, a little bit of a pivot, but I think very connected. You teach preservice bilingual teachers. You're getting them ready to do this work. Where are you seeing a gap between what sometimes is happening in that preservice training and the skills that folks need to know when they're on the ground in front of students, leading learning? Jordan: Yeah, I mean, a little of my, my, you know, context is that I'm an adjunct professor, so not full-time and I primarily work on the West Coast, so I can speak to my, my experiences, not necessarily those of the entire country, except for those that I'm, you know, in network with. But what, what I see in the, in the, in the time that I've taught university work, it's really evolved over time because of the amount that I try to insert myself into courses of study that are really fixed, and really fixed around monolingual approaches to teaching and learning that are preparing teachers to go into English medium classrooms primarily. That is what we're seeing, and it's what we, what I, what I experienced going through university, you know, decades ago, and it's still what we're seeing in a lot of the course of study is that it's meant for English medium with a, just like in curriculum, a side note or a sidebar for multilingual learners, and then, you know, maybe within a course some history about the different programming of dual language, transitional bilingual, you know, the terminology around that and the history, but not something as prominent as coursework specific to dual language, which is a heavy need. That's something that as a district leader for many years, as a, as a teacher leader within the district working as a, as a district specialist, that was my primary role, was noticing teachers coming out of programs and then freaking out saying, "I do not know what to do about dual language. I just speak Spanish," and so they put me in dual language. And there's so much more to it than that, especially if all of your coursework has been around English literacy and about the the way in which English literacy works, but you're now being asked to teach Spanish literacy. So what happens is first, teachers do what they know, and of course, right? We know about English literacy, so maybe I'm going to apply that using the Spanish curriculum. That's rough, and so that's a big shift. Or go back to what you know if it's a teacher that was, that grew up speaking Spanish, they go back to the pedagogy they know or the instruction they learned and therefore applying that. And that's not necessarily the most updated or what we know we can do with students, especially in the way we're talking about holistic biliteracy. So there's, there's, there's that that comes up. What we, what I've seen have a big impact on in the time that I've taught at coursework and then been able to influence coursework in different program contexts, whether it was there's preservice that I've worked with and then there's inservice, like endorsement programs that teachers are adding on while inservice. Both of those, when we can add in the research, um, from, you know, the Kathy Escamilla's work, Ofelia García's work, insert translanguaging theory into the course design, when that's allowed, we at least shift to this multilingual ecology and this mindset that moves into advocacy and what we want for students and teachers to walk into classrooms with. But then if we can have an actual course or, uh, there was a time I was developing a dual language certificate program, if we can have a program that's, one, coursework taught in Spanish to develop academic language in Spanish. When teachers are, teachers grew up speaking Spanish but didn't have the chance to go to school in academic ways at the higher university level, the rigor in fourth, fifth, sixth and beyond grades for dual language requires a certain level of academic language that teachers come often asking for, "How do I, how do I gain more of that?" And the the best, the best way to do it is professional learning in Spanish and having coursework in Spanish. So that's a, that's a need for sure, but that requires Spanish textbooks, which are something that within the US context are just not as prominent. And so searching for those types of textbooks that relate to the field of study. So there, there, there is need, it's just whether the university is willing to shift their approach and that comes within the university's context. Brandon: Yeah. Brandon: All right, I've got two final questions, one for each of you. So Mario, I'm going to start with you. We're thinking about back-to-school season right now. That's where educators' heads are. Some have gone back a few weeks ago, some are starting this week. My son just started school yesterday. So, you know, our listeners, they're in the weeds on this back-to-school process. Brandon: For a district leader who runs a dual language program and now has listened to this episode and thanks to the both of you, is now questioning whether their foundational skills approach this year is truly bilingual, what's the first thing you think they should be thinking about? Like what is the inventory you want them to take and an action you want them to take tomorrow? Mario: Yeah, I would probably begin by finding like-minded individuals who understand that there are additional steps towards multilingual education, educational equity within the bilingual context, and finding the allies to start with advocacy internally, right? This can be very lonely work. We want to make sure that we are gathering people with different perspectives, from your parent coordinator to your literacy coach to your bilingual directors, and bringing them together with the purpose of engaging in more research together. There are some really, really helpful articles and publications that are out there that has informed both the work that we've done internally and that we incorporate into our professional development. Probably the easiest read that I would suggest for a district leader for a dual language teacher to engage in, is the SOR Building Biliteracy article by Silvia Dorta-Duque de Reyes, which was published in Language Magazine July 2023 issue. That's a great place to start because it gives teachers really concrete ways of like, "How does this look like in the classroom? And what does dictado look like?" There are larger publications by our friends at the National Committee for Effective Literacy, specifically the Voices from the Field. I think the title is "Impact of the Implementation of Science of Reading Instruction and Policy on Emergent Bilingual English Learner Literacy Programs" by Kim Song and Kathy Escamilla. That came out in November 2022. And that gives you an idea of what to watch out for and what to lean into as far as how to incorporate science of reading instruction in multilingual settings. So finding your allies and curating the readings to be able to start developing this collective knowledge, and then squaring that away with what you already have and perhaps, you know, what are some additional steps we want to take on to improve our program. Mario: There are other suggestions that I have, but I won't belabor them. I do want to take a plug, I want to plug in the English Language Success Forum and some of their curriculum guideline tools have been particularly helpful. They have specific suggestions when adopting a Spanish language arts curriculum that I think is worthy of looking into. Reading League also has their curriculum guidelines. So, but just making sure you have a comprehensive approach if the goal is to adopt a curriculum or switch curriculums. So I'll leave it at that. Brandon: I love that. And you know what? That move for the district leader, I think you nailed it. It's like, do that inventory on what you currently have so that you can make better choices for where you're going. And thank you for sharing the resources. We'll make sure we'll link them too. Shout out to Kathy Escamilla, who we love at Medley, but also who you have cited multiple times today and we appreciate that. She's like the foremother of ML pedagogy, so she deserves the call-out. So thank you. Brandon: All right, Jordan, if a bilingual teacher, so we talked about our district leaders and what they're thinking about or our school leaders. So now let's get to this bilingual teacher in their classroom. They're headed back to class, they started last week, they're starting next week, and they are, they've listened to this and now they're like, "Okay, I really need to switch and shift some of my foundational skill instruction towards a much more holistic bilingual approach." What's the one concrete change that you think they should be making to their first unit? Like a thing you want them to do? Jordan: I think the first question I would ask teachers is, have you looked at the other language of instruction? Are you teaching in one language or are you teaching in both? And so if you're teaching in one language, if you have like a partner teacher, have you opened up the English curriculum from your Spanish curriculum? Because do you know what is being taught in, in, in both languages? We need to be able to look across both sides to be able to make informed decisions. Uh, so I think I'd open up all that we've got and ask questions from the district of, "Do we have guidance? Do we have clarity on what our schedule looks like to be able to implement a certain amount of time in Spanish, a certain amount of time in English, and be able to make space for cross-linguistic transfer?" So I think there's two questions that I would, I would leave teachers with. But if they don't, you know, we always do what's within our control. And so I always like to work with what's concrete and what's within your control. Jordan: So if you, if those are questions that you've asked, if the question of like, "Do we have space to collaborate with our partner teachers?" All of those are questions that depending on the answer, I'd have a different next step. But within our control, all of our control as teachers, make space to elevate what students bring in that, that metalinguistic space. Make space for cross-linguistic transfer at a minimum, elevate what students tell you they notice between the languages, add that to a chart, put it on the wall, tell students to use it. Use it in their writing, use it to add to when we start to notice something. As you notice a, a text, a word in a text that's a cognate that matches this cognate pattern, go add it to the chart. That's a very concrete way to start to build this mentality with students and foster that, that multilingual environment in the classroom. Brandon: I could talk to both of you all day. This is so fun and you are both brilliant. I think community of educators are lucky to have you in this work, leading it, training us, helping us get better for kids. So thank you for spending time with me today. It's been a real pleasure. Brandon: But before I let you go, we always end with the same question. So Jordan, I'm going to start with you. Where in parallel process, we were talking about it, right? Like we are supporting learning and asking people to show up and be really vulnerable and do the really hard thing of learning in public. You're a learner yourself. So what's something you're learning from right now, someone you're learning from, where are you at in your learning journey? Jordan: Right now, my my biggest learning that I continuously am working to develop is the nuances in oracy development. I'm always, the joy and need to develop oracy in with students in the classroom, noticing the nuances behind that. And so always diving into, I know we plugged Kathy Escamilla's work, but always, always looking for ways to learn more about the the need for spending time at the word level of of both input but then output, the speaking and writing, being able to learn how to increase the rigor of students, the rigor that we're asking of students in writing and being able to develop those supports along the way at the syntax level of writing. So explicit writing, explicit instruction for oracy, that's where my, that's where my learning's at right now. That's where I'm I'm spending the majority of my time when I'm doing my reading because we're always, we're always reading research, articles, books, you name it, there's, there's always something that we could plug. Brandon: I love it. Okay, Mario. Mario: I'm trying to lean in to what Ofelia and her team calls the translanguaging corriente. Because I think that that is one of the kind of theoretical approaches that is not unique just to bilingual education but to multilingual learners regardless of program model that they're afforded to learn within. And we're getting a lot of requests for how to incorporate bilingual approaches in the English medium classroom. And even more specifically what that looks like in middle and high school settings, where, you know, we're facing this idea of long-term English language learners who haven't tested out of, uh, you know, of that system and being able to help monolingual English-dominant teachers incorporate translanguaging spaces to tap into what all the research says as well, home language use in the context of English acquisition. So that's where my head is at. Um, you know, a lot of the work we do is in K-5, but can't forget our multilingual learners in middle and high school. So that's where my head has been at lately. Brandon: I love that. That's a lot of the work we're up to here on my side of the aisle, so I'm glad we get to work together. Thank you so much for the work that you do, for the time that you've spent with me today, and for just sharing your wisdom with our community. So we're lucky to have you. And of course, thank you to everyone for listening to this episode of Leading Multilingual Learning, powered by Medley Learning. Brandon: Powered by Medley Learning.