Today we welcome three guests for one incredible conversation. Andrea Honigsfeld, Maria Dove, and Carrie McDermott Goldman are all professors at Molloy University. They are longtime collaborators and co-authors of the new Corwin book Wait, Don't Just Translate: Multidimensional Strategies for Emergent Multilingual Learners. Together they bring more than 70 years of experience teaching multilingual learners — from ESL classrooms in New York City to teacher preparation programs to district-level coaching. Andrea is a Fulbright Scholar and the author of more than 27 books. She and Maria co-developed the collaboration and co-teaching model that's used in schools across the country. And Carrie brings expertise in culturally responsive pedagogy and the intersection of multilingual and special education services. Their new book tackles a question that's only gotten more urgent in the age of AI translation: when does translating help our newcomer students, and when does it actually hold them back?
Guest: Agency is a concept connected to the student's own understanding of self, to be able to act in line with their own understanding of where they were, where they are today, and where they wish to go. So that has to be nurtured. Students need to understand that they already have agency. We're not giving it to them. Agency is not handed down, creating an environment in which we invite student voice so that they could think about their own thinking. They could think about their own languages, their own cultural experiences, and that all of those experiences and skills matter. Brandon: Hey everyone. ¿Qué tal? 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 that are shaping better education for multilingual learners. And today, we have something very special. There are three guests joining us for one really important conversation. Andrea Honigsfeld, Maria Dove, and Carrie McDermot-Goldman are all professors at Molloy University, long-time collaborators, and co-authors of the new Corwin book, 'Wait, Don't Just Translate: Multidimensional Strategies for Emergent Multilingual Learners'. Between them, they bring more than 70 years of experience teaching multilingual learners, from ESL classrooms in New York City to teacher preparation programs, to district-level coaching. Andrea is a Fulbright scholar and the author of more than 27 books. She and Maria co-developed the collaboration and co-teaching model that's used in schools across the country, and Carrie brings expertise in culturally responsive pedagogy and the intersection of multilingual and special education services. Their new book tackles a question that's only gotten more urgent in the age of AI translation. When does translating help our newcomer students? And when does it actually hold them back? And I am so excited to welcome each of you. Thank you, thank you, thank you for joining the podcast. Guest: Well, thank you for having us. Brandon: Well, I always start these conversations by asking one question. I read a high-level overview of your bios, each of you impressive in your own right, and what's really beautiful is long-time collaborators as well. But when you think about who you are and who you are in the world of work, what's something that people don't get to know about you, something you've done or something that really matters to you professionally, that you want to share? And Carrie, I'm going to ask you to go first. Guest: So in the world of work, I would say that something that a lot of people don't necessarily know about me is that I was the first grad assistant for Andrea Honigsfeld when I was in the Master's degree program over at Molloy. And I had the pleasure of working with her very, very closely throughout my time there and we kept in touch over the years. And Maria Dove and I share an office and we do lunch probably once every week or every other week as often as we can. I am a career changer. So although I've been in the classroom for over 20 years, I was in business for a long time and my claim to fame is putting the first cargo pocket on a little boy's pant. So with changes to NAFTA and some of the things that went on, our industry kind of shuttered and I moved around a bit and then I found my way to Molloy. Brandon: I think there's something really magical about career changers in education because you bring a really different way of looking at a space that sometimes can get really stagnant, like we're talking to each other in echo chambers. So I love that you're here and I love that that relationship has really worked out for everyone in the room. Maria, what about you? What's something people don't get to know about you that you're excited to share? Guest: Well, I taught in public school, ESL when it was called ESL, for over 25 years. And on my way home, I used to pass Molloy and I would say, one of these days I'm going to work there. And I had an opportunity to meet Andrea because everybody on Long Island knew Andrea. Andrea was the superstar before she was the international superstar. She was a superstar of New York. So I happened to be at a conference. She sat at the far end of my table. I said, oh, here's my chance. But of course, since Andrea, popular gal she is, someone immediately scooped her off the table and there went the day until we had a break. And the line at the ladies' room right outside the conference room was so long, I went searching all over the building to find another ladies' room. And I did, and it was empty except for one person, was Andrea. And I gave Andrea my elevator pitch about how when I retired, I would like to blah, blah, blah. And she kind of just put the idea in her pocket and two months later, I got a phone call and I was interviewed for as an adjunct for Molloy. And that's how my career started and our relationship began from there. Brandon: Oh, I love this. These are not the answers I was anticipating, but what a connector, Andrea. So let's hear from you. What's the thing? Guest: I think I have to stay with the Molloy and educational theme here because my colleagues, my friends, my dear, dear long-term collaborators... So what nobody knows is that we had a doctoral degree, our own doctoral degrees from the same institution, St. John's University, and we worked with the same mentor, Dr. Rita Dunn. And even though the concept of learning styles is no longer recognized as something that we are building around in our educational practices, at the time when Dr. Dunn introduced this concept to be able to teach the students the way they learn, or to understand each child's own learning strength, was revolutionary. This was back in the 80s and the 90s. So it was such a wonderful thread of connection that the three of us have because we learned not only about educational constructs that might no longer be considered, but we learned about mentorship, we learned about collaboration, we learned about supporting each other and supporting others. And I think every one of us has embraced that notion of whatever we received from our mentors, now we pass it on. So Carrie was my student. I always, always mention that, that she was in the very first cohort of five students that we were able to recruit for our Master's program in TESOL. And now she surpassed me. What's your current title, Carrie? Because I'm losing track of how many leadership positions you have. And that's the best way anybody could really see their own impact is when your students, people you supported, you mentored, are standing on their own two feet and actually not standing, walking, running, soaring. So, Carrie, what is your latest title at Molloy? Guest: I'm the director of graduate, postgraduate, and professional studies programs. Brandon: I love this. I will say this and then I'm going to transition us, but this might be my bias and folks who I know who are in the space all three of you are in, in research and sometimes what feels like an ivory tower to folks who are on the ground doing the work day in and day out, is that it can feel really competitive and that everyone's trying to elbow to the seat, to the title, to the chapter, to the book. What is really remarkable getting to connect with the three of you is that there's no elbowing. It's like this really intentional collaboration. That is where research then does really good things for kids. Guest: Thank you for noticing that and recognizing that about our work. We're truly blessed. We really are. Brandon: How lucky are we? And that we get to do this work. So I'm excited. And I'm really excited to talk to you about this book. It is something I have been really obsessed thinking and talking about. It's in many reasons why I got into EdTech and started thinking about tools for multilingual learners because of real fear that I had of the over-translation that might really disrupt the learning from a good space, right? Like from a really well-intentioned space, but could really disrupt the learning and the progress that multilingual learners will make in the development of English language skills. And so the book, the title, in many ways is a directive. 'Wait, don't just translate.' What were you seeing and hearing in classrooms and from educators that made you feel this book was urgent right now? And Maria, if you want to start us off, and then we can keep the conversation going. Guest: Well, I have the pleasure of working with student teachers at Molloy, and more often than not, I'd hear in my seminars of my student teachers going into teaching ENL classes that there's an awful lot of translation going on. In fact, one of my student teachers came to me and she says, I'm not using any of the strategies. My cooperating teacher goes into, because they're co-teaching, okay, I'm putting that in quotes, when they go into co-teach, the classroom or grade level teacher or the content area teacher expects them to be the translator. So that's what they do. So they're translating for the students, and then they're also disciplining. So that becomes their role. So there's no co-teaching going on. Students are just learning the content via translation, and there is no English language development going on. So my student teachers were bewildered, like, so what are we supposed to be doing? So that confusion was happening. And then my observations when I would go in and watch, so much of that going on. So it's a quick way to get things done. And we understand the need for that as our classrooms, the time frames for learning become more and more condensed. Yet, we find that what's being eliminated is that systematic way of learning English alongside of the content. Guest: So with the emergence and an expansion of AI technology, we all got very excited, like what can AI do for us, for our students? And as a multilingual person, I immediately wanted to try out what can it do in Hungarian, which is considered to be one of the hardest languages, most complicated grammatical structures. So can it do anything? So I was in awe of how whatever I gave, it was ChatGPT, the translation was immaculate. And then it can also talk back to you, so it can tell you, not just type it up and give it to you in text, but in standard Hungarian with the most perfect, clearest pronunciation. So it both gave me pause, like wow, and also like, wow. Now, what are we going to do with this? How could we be more intentional around using AI, even though that's not going to be the main topic of our publication, but when translation is getting more and more readily available and more and more advanced, more and more accurate, then as Maria said, will it be the easy way out and we'll just be providing quick access to material, to information to our students? And how can we be more intentional around when to do it and when not to do it? Brandon: Absolutely. It's interesting and this is, I'm going back to little Brandon as a child who when I was in an ESL classroom got handed translated material without any real assessment if I could read in Spanish. And so I have a deep core memory of feeling pretty crappy, like getting the thing I was supposed to be able to read and not being able to access it in English and then getting it in Spanish, which was like the thing that was supposed to be my superpower, that I also couldn't access it in. And I can imagine in this moment of over-translation, how many young people are experiencing that feeling across content areas every single day. Like, here's the translated version, go to town, without the ability to access it. Guest: And I just wanted to add to that, sometimes the translations that we provide for our students are not the actual language that they know and speak. And that's another issue that oftentimes comes up when I'm speaking with teachers or I'm visiting classrooms that they think that it's a one-size translation for everyone that's in the class that might speak, let's say Spanish or another language. It's not always a one-size translation. And I think that that also causes a lot of confusion for our students and some of them are not literate. Maybe they speak but they don't read and write in the language. And there's so many different parts to translation that we have to really think larger than what we're giving them. Brandon: It's great that you're thinking about this and really pushing educators to think about this too. The book makes clear that this isn't an anti-translation argument. I think that's really important. I want to start the conversation with that because you include a do's and a don'ts table and a flowchart for when to translate. So how do you help educators hold both ideas? Translation matters and it's not enough. And Maria, do you want to help us think through some of that initial thinking? Guest: I think the first point I would make is the idea that what is your role as a teacher of a multilingual learner? Now, for the most part, people who are teachers think about their content. So I want to teach, so most of the time, the answer to that question would be, I want my students to learn the content that I'm teaching. They have to then rethink their roles because they need to see themselves not just a teacher of content, they need to see themselves as teachers of language. They have, students need to learn the English language in order for that to be the vehicle to learn the content. So that is the critical shift that teachers need to make. So if I were going to make one point, I would try to convince them of why that is so critical to the success of multilingual learners. Guest: So I also think that one of the things I do mention to teachers is that we need to think about the vehicle. What do students actually need to do with language to accomplish the content-based task? And I think many times teachers lose sight of that. They're so worried about students' knowledge, they don't really think about that vehicle. So I ask them throughout the planning process and even with my students, I ask them to think about, well, if this is your end product, what do students need to do to actually get there with language? And how do you get them there? And I think that goes directly back to our scaffolding book, what are those pieces that we put together to really support the learning that's happening in whatever language students are working through. And I think that that's really important as we consider building both language and content knowledge together, simultaneously. Guest: We have a beautiful, very powerful illustration in our book where there is a sign in a bathroom in an elementary school which indicates that the water coming from the tap is not potable. So do not drink is translated into multiple languages and there's also a visual sign with a water cup or a glass with the red line across it. So there are going to be times, or in a biology lab, the rules, the safety rules. There are so many of these examples that we could think of when translating and providing information in multiple languages, but also through multiple modalities, that visual input, the visual representation will also be really critical. And that's what we have to tap into and discern when is it essential? When is it non-negotiable that you must have that particular information available to the students or their parents in languages that are accessible, but also modalities that are accessible? Brandon: I'm holding that. Languages that are accessible, modalities that are accessible. We can layer on multiple scaffolds to support the information that we need a student to get. And there's moments where that is urgent, it's safety to your point. And then there's just smart teaching that we can do that with too. Guest: And then the second point connected to this is not to confuse translating and translanguaging. The clarity around how, as you mentioned earlier, we're not anti-translation, we're definitely strong advocates of home language literacy development, holding on to your identity. So translanguaging pedagogy invites teachers and students to use everybody's full linguistic repertoires. Translating would simply undercut that because now we're targeting one language and the student might not even be biliterate, might be bilingual as you mentioned earlier, but not biliterate. So translation and translanguaging are two very different concepts that we're also emphasizing. Brandon: You use the term 'emergent multilingual learners' throughout the book, which I love. Why was it, and Carrie, I'm going to throw this one to you, why was it important to lead with that framing rather than 'newcomers' or other terms we hear used to describe students who are developing English language? Guest: Well, not every student is a newcomer. So not everyone is first coming, but also thinking about how students are on this trajectory of learning language. It's not, not everybody starts at the same point, but we are all emerging into a different level from where we started. And so I don't think that the term newcomer always defines all of our students, but it gives them grace to identify as somebody that is really learning as they go and it's meeting them where they're at. Brandon: I love that. I am going to use that because I catch myself sometimes using newcomer and I hate it. I hate it on every level, but I'm like, that's the language that we use in this work. And I will be borrowing and holding and using and owning emergent multilingual learner in my language too. Guest: There's another reason. So at the onset of my career, I had to quote statistics regarding what percentage of our English learners, multilingual learners, were born in the United States. And that percentage was 40%. So they're born in immigrant communities. They're born to families or in families where the parents were newcomers or new arrivals, but the children were born here. And today, that number is up to 80%. So the newcomer label again might not accurately capture who we are talking about or whose needs we're responding to in this publication. Brandon: And might really lead to some biased thinking unintentionally on the ground of who is the kid in front of you and who are their families. It creates a mental model that may not actually be helpful or adaptive to the work that you have to do later. So I really, I appreciate that. Guest: What often surprises them as well as myself is that what we really don't know. It's like we're surprised by things. When we were compiling this book and I had the absolute pleasure of interviewing former students of mine, former newcomers. And here it is, 25 some odd years later that they were revealing things to me and I was there. They were with me two hours every day, intensive ESL classes, and the things I didn't know. I thought I knew so much, and the things I wasn't aware of that was going on. So I think that what often happens is no matter how much you know about a particular culture and you think you are very well informed, that each individual student has his or her own journey. And that is critical to the success of this work, to understanding, being that person who listens and understands about how their journey needs to be honored. We make these assumptions and I know I did it all the time. They could be simple assumptions, like when you're talking about what you had for breakfast and a student might say, oh, I had a sandwich. No, sandwiches are for lunch. So it's like these little cross-cultural misinformations. It can be just as simple as that. But I think teachers are more often surprised at what they think they know and they really don't. Brandon: What a powerful experience for you too. Something that not every educator gets to really go back and look years later at the impact, the missed opportunities. All of this is real when we teach young people, right? The successes, the struggles. I'm thrilled that you got that and I'm thrilled that they got that experience to share it with you too. Guest: It was just so wonderful reconnecting with them. I cannot tell you. And where their lives went. And one became an English teacher and she's a, we actually published her poem at the end of our book, one of her poems. She's a published author. And it was just so amazing where they went and who became a nurse, who became, it's just unbelievable stories. And it's just so gratifying to see that they're living wonderfully happy lives. Brandon: I love hearing that. I really do and I also cannot wait to read this poem at the end of the book. I have only, for our listeners, been privy to part of the book, so I'm coming learning with you as we're having this conversation. But this is for Andrea, one of the most powerful moments for me in chapter one is the story of a former student who was newer to the country from Iraq whose father agreed to have him held back because there was no interpreter at the meeting. It really moved me, from a heart space. How do stories like that shape the urgency of this work, not just for classroom instruction, but for how school communities communicate with families? Guest: So first of all, stories speak to the heart. A moment ago, I was citing research, percentages, that kind of information will appeal to the brain, but truly to move the needle, to develop empathy and deeper understanding of where these students are coming from, stories will speak to the heart of the educators, of the administrators, and even hopefully policy makers. And this is a moment for us maybe to also acknowledge the dozens and dozens of educators who allowed us to interview them, whose stories or their students' stories made it into the book. So we could not have written it just on our own. So Maria's former students were acknowledged, but I also want to give a huge shout out to the many, many classroom teachers, ELD teachers, bilingual educators, administrators, parent liaisons, whatever special roles that they have played, for their willingness to speak with us and their generosity to share their best practices and their challenges. We did not want to sugarcoat this issue at all. So we are very open about the challenges that both students, families, and educators face when it comes to translating or not to translate. Brandon: Carrie, each chapter includes a section called 'Moving Beyond Translation' with big ideas and practical strategies. Can you walk us through what that looks like in one area, say building relationships or the classroom environment, so the folks who are listening here can get a picture of the shift that they should be thinking about making day-to-day? Guest: One of the things that we really need to think about is what our classroom environments are for our students, what it means for them to be there. And thinking about how we set the stage for routines within the classroom so that students know what to expect when they're in those spaces, but also really developing an opportunity where we get to know the student. So when we talk about the last question, really thinking about how we build the relationships with families, with students to really understand who they are, so that we can connect with them on a level besides just education. We need to know who they are inside and out so that we can help them and guide them throughout whatever it is that's happening within the classroom. And really thinking about explaining things to them so that they understand it in the best way that we possibly can, whether it's through imagery or videos or however we're doing that. And then really showing them what that looks like so that they understand the expectation, they can live up to the expectation and feel good about what they're doing every day. And I think that moving beyond translation is really giving students the opportunity to participate, to engage, to be seen, and to be able to develop relationships not just with the teachers, but with their peers and other people throughout the school building. It's a community. And I think it's really about building community, a community of learners and a community that's open and willing to accept one another. Brandon: I appreciate that. Maria, what about you? Guest: I always go to the practical, which is more instructional strategies. So when we think about how we present certain aspects of a lesson to a student, thinking about how we can break it down into its different parts. So most teachers, they go to vocabulary. And most teachers are very comfortable with that being a first step. So how do you go about just emphasizing the most important vocabulary for the lesson, so getting that across. And that could include some translation. But it still is emphasizing the importance of the meaning of the English words. And then, how about using something like a sentence frame or a fill in the blank? So now students learning these new content area words can now form a sentence with them. So it's not always that what teachers think it is, because teachers think, how am I going to do all of this information and get it across to a student without translating? And we're asking, don't think about the whole thing. Think about something. What is something that you can get across to your student? Because when I interviewed my former students, they were so grateful for the little clues that they had because they can put the clues together. We don't have to hand them the whole ball of wax, so to speak. It's important just to start somewhere to give them something. And I think it was Andrea who just mentioned the visuals. Think about visuals. How visuals can just support students. And that's another thing that they said for the most part, it was the teachers that had those visuals, those charts, those things that were up and available to them that helped them to survive in the classroom when they were maybe not so proficient. Guest: Well, I want them to know it's so much that we actually put the concept into the subtitle of the book, which is multidimensional strategies, to try to keep this prefix multi or the word multiple in mind, that there's not one right tool or one single answer, a magic bullet at all, or a magic wand to be a little less violent with our imagery here. Instead, thinking about the prefix multi as multilingual, multisensory, multimodal, multicultural, all the different ways that we can provide entry points to our students to develop ownership of their learning, very much what Maria just described slightly differently. What is that one thing that we can do in every lesson for every student that will get them started, that will get them that access point, and then maintaining their language, literacy, content, and social emotional development through those multidimensional strategies is what I'm most excited about. Brandon: I love this. You developed the nine dimensions of scaffolding framework together. For an educator who's been reaching for Google Translate as their primary support, which dimension tends to be the most eye-opening entry point as you're thinking about, and you could all have different answers here too, but which one do you think becomes this sort of interesting entry point as we're trying to shift gears tomorrow in our classroom? Guest: So I want to piggyback on what I just said, which is multimodality. I'm most excited about the multimodality, this notion of message abundancy that is less commonly embraced by educators in our experience, which is to be able to provide the same information through a video clip, through a short article, through a diagram, through any other kinds of a visual representation so that the students are having access to the same core information, content, skill, but through multiple entry points, multiple modalities, multiple ways that we're getting to the point. Brandon: I love that. Carrie, anything to add? Guest: So I definitely agree with Andrea. I also think that some of the eye-opening pieces of it are considering that not all of our multilingual learners are struggling. And that the scaffolds that we provide for them are giving them the opportunity to build from where they are, right? So when we think about teaching in general, most teachers teach to the 70%, which is our average student. And when we think about scaffolding, scaffolding is not just meant for remediation. Scaffolding is meant to meet the student where they are and help them grow from there. So it does apply to our students that are our high flyers, our students that are very advanced. And I think that that's very eye-opening for many educators because most people think of scaffolding as a crutch or a support for a struggling student as opposed to it really being a means for students to grow from where they are. And I really want to always emphasize that students have the capacity and the ability to grow, and we want to meet them where they're at so that they have the ability to do so. And so that's what I'd like to emphasize with the scaffolding. Brandon: Really important, Carrie. It's a thing that I think folks sometimes miss because we experience language, the language development in English through a deficit lens, and so then we start treating the content acquisition through a deficit lens. And now you're a struggling learner. And it's like, I have no real evidence of that. I have evidence that you are developing English as a second or third language, but I don't have that real evidence that you are struggling to grasp the concepts. Maria, anything you want to add? Guest: I think we often think about scaffolding as part of instruction, lesson planning. How do we scaffold our lesson? And in our nine dimensions, we talk about other dimensions like the environment. So what is it about the classroom in and of itself, how chairs are arranged, so the physical aspects of the classroom. I mentioned before about the charts and visuals. You walk into some classrooms, particularly high school classrooms, and the rooms are very stark. So how do you go about making sure that there are these supports in the classroom? And it also goes beyond just the physical, it's also the emotional aspects, the sense of belonging, how you make all students feel welcome. All of these are part of scaffolding for multilingual learners. Brandon: I'm really happy that you said that. I was hoping you were going to go there as you were speaking, Maria, because it is about content, but it's also around connection. Because that, and Andrea and I have had this conversation, that's where intellectual risk happens, right? I will push harder and faster in a place where I feel psychologically and emotionally safe. And so there's no real meaningful learning without that security. So, an important one for all of us to be thinking about. I'm going to move us along and I'm wondering, you write that the goal is for students to develop agency, autonomy, and resilience. I love this. Agency, autonomy, and resilience. When a student arrives with emerging English and a lot is unfamiliar about the language, what does student agency actually look like in those first weeks or months in a particular classroom or learning environment? Andrea, start us off. Guest: Agency, as we define it, is a concept connected to the student's own understanding of self, that they know what their goals are, to be able to act in a way that is in line with their own understanding of where they were, where they are today, and where they wish to go in the future. So that has to be nurtured. Students need to understand that they already have agency, we're not giving it to them. Agency is not handed down, creating an environment in which we offer the students choices, and one of those choices will be the translanguaging pedagogy we talked about. We also invite them to show us their metacognitive, metalinguistic, metacultural, and all kinds of meta skills that are out there, every one of those meta skills that we could just enlist so that they could think about their own thinking, they could think about their own languages, their own cultural experiences, and that all of those experiences and skills matter. Brandon: Carrie, one teacher you cite in the book describes students developing an over-reliance on translation themselves. Like they're naming it, the students are saying I'm using it too much, doing all their work in their home language and then translating it. So they never are really developing English proficiency in a way that they're feeling proud of, which is what they named. This is a real problem most teachers can relate to. How do you suggest intervening? What's the strategy educator should be taking to sort of move students away from the trend? Guest: So I think breaking information down into smaller, more manageable parts for the students and giving them the opportunity where you're teaching them how to structure language, what it means in conversation, giving them things like conversation starters that allow them to engage in conversation with somebody else, giving them opportunities to have very scaffolded writing depending on what they need to produce, giving them opportunities also that are more constructed. So a lot of teachers use things like turn and talks, which are great for students to have a chat about something, but if a student doesn't understand what they're talking about, often times it's not a directed activity. So giving them a more detailed opportunity where they can kind of frame their understanding around what it is that they need to have a conversation about. So it gives them the opportunity to actually engage about that particular topic instead of sitting there silently or completely being off topic on what it is that they're trying to learn. So really getting students to use authentic language that becomes part of who they are where they feel much more comfortable and giving them opportunities to work perhaps in smaller groups where they can have conversations with one another and they're not feeling as if they're on the spot in a whole class environment until they feel more comfortable. And then you start to see the students feel better about what they're doing with language and also asking them for their own ideas about what their choices are throughout the lessons. I think we need to give them more autonomy in that respect as well. Brandon: Maria, what about you? A teacher comes to you and they're like, how do I intervene on this? They're just translating it, they're doing it in their home language and then just translating it over. Guest: I think Carrie's on the right track when she talks about opportunities. So it's not a lecture, sit and listen environment. It can't be. It has to be students working in groups, students having to produce writing, students having to work on projects together. The more opportunities there are for language to be used in the classroom, the better they will feel about using it. And it's interesting because I think it's often the students that are the overachievers with very high expectations about their progress that they want to do well. So they rely on translation and it's so important to them to do well in the content and to learn. So they are, they have the right mindset in that way, but what they also need is to be supported to take that risk. And that goes back to what we were talking about before, that safety and that sense of belonging, all of that is critical to their risk-taking behavior. Brandon: I think a lot about too the opportunities for kids to feel successful. We all do what we do because we get a lot of feedback that we're good at it. And I have a feeling we might not have, I don't know, Andrea, 27 books written if people weren't telling you, they're good books. And kids are the same, right? We want that feedback, external validation that you're good at it. And I remember when I was a teacher and a principal, I thought a lot about this with my kids, which are really just short burst writing moments. The big, long writing is so scary, and that has to be there and I'm not saying get rid of it. But I'm just saying these small opportunities to write three sentences really fast, like a stop and jot, and to feel like, oh, I know more than I thought I did. I am actually better at this than I believed I was. That's part of being a multilingual learner, that's also just part of being an adolescent, right? Learning to develop that confidence that you have more skill than you believe you do. Guest: Yes, I have a very interesting example, a story from the book where a teacher wanted to tap into students' multilingual skills as well as this need or urgency to translate. But what she did was to translate in the opposite direction. So she asked, and this is a K-12 teacher, a single teacher in a rural area where she goes to every single grade level. So at the elementary level, she asks students to think of a nursery rhyme or some kind of a chant or a song from their childhood that they would like to translate into English and teach it to everybody. And in the upper grades and at the high school level, some kind of a popular song, either they grew up on or that they are still listening to, and then take a stab at it and try to translate that back into English. So just this grappling with the beauty of linguistic transfers. What happens when there is an idiom? What happens when there's an interesting phrase that there are some words that are untranslatable? There is one more beautiful illustration that we have from Holly Sawyer, who you might be talking to eventually, I think. So Holly is frequently featured in this book and a couple of our other books as well. So she created a small bulletin board on which she asks her students to post words, phrases that are just not translatable to English. There's so much lost in translation. So these are just other examples where translation, that metalinguistic skill and awareness is at the forefront of our work, which is not over-relying on translation. Brandon: Yeah, I appreciate that. Also, I could talk about educators and great magical moments that happen in the classroom all day, every day. I just love us and it just brings me joy. All right, I am going to move us into our last question because we are really close to time. And Maria, I'm going to ask you, Chapter eight is about preparing emerging multilingual learners for the future, post-secondary planning, career awareness, mentorship. It is a brilliant way to end the book, but why was it important to include this chapter? Guest: We talked a little bit about student agency and how they see themselves. For many of our multilingual learners, they sometimes see themselves within their family structure, who their parents may have become. It's important that they be able to reach out and see themselves in a different way, maybe not following the family business or seeing themselves in ways that maybe they didn't think were possible. There's a great movie, it was called McFarland, USA, 2015, Kevin Costner plays a track coach. And he's with young boys, high school boys who work on in the farms with their parents and he wants them to join a track team. And then he starts talking to them about going to college, which they never saw for themselves. And it's amazing because it's based on a true story. I encourage everyone to see it. And but what happens is because these boys are influenced by this track coach to seek different futures, they all go to college. They all become for the most part successful. Many of them become teachers and come back to the school to teach. They didn't see that future for themselves. So I think it's very important for these youngsters, as well as all students, to try to see themselves in different ways, in different careers, to be exposed to different possibilities, even in this, you know, uncertain future. We don't know what the jobs of the future are going to be, but I think it's important to have those conversations so that students can find their own way. Brandon: What really moved me when I saw this as the last chapter, one, I think sometimes it's so hard to move a kid to proficiency in English that we think that we have done our work once we get there. And so all the other kids are having these other conversations and we are laser focused, I want you to graduate, I want you to pass the ACCESS exam, and we miss these other opportunities that to really develop a different sense of self that can happen in parallel process that we could be working hard to graduation and working hard to pass the ACCESS exam and also having these really meaningful conversations around the future. So what a beautiful way to end the book and our conversation. I could talk to you three for hours. So thank you so much for joining me today. Before I let you go, we always ask one final question. We're talking about learning, I'm asking you practical skills to share with educators so that they can do something tomorrow and learn something today. So what's something that you are learning right now or who is someone you're learning from? And Maria, I'll start with you. Guest: I'm always learning from those that are in the field. One of my privileges, I mentioned before, is working with my student teachers, but it's their cooperating teachers that I find sometimes I'm like, especially now, classrooms since I've been in the classroom, you have to realize it's been almost 25 years since I've been in a classroom. So here we have technology being used that wasn't available to me. I was still, I was back in the dark ages cutting out pictures from magazines. Now, it's the way that technology is being used in the classroom, brilliantly, combining wonderful teaching techniques with the possibilities that exist today. So I'm always learning from those that are in the field who are actually doing the work. Brandon: Andrea, what about you? Guest: Well, I have three sons. I already shared that with you in our previous conversation, and I'm learning how to be a parent that offers guidance rather than telling my kids what to do, how to do, when to do. As they're growing up, exactly what we talked about, supporting that agency, that autonomy, that resilience, allowing them to make mistakes and then learn from that, and how to step back. And I think it is related to teaching as well because we have to do the same thing. We can't overscaffold, overtranslate, overcuddle and always do everything for our students or for our own children. So now I'm practicing that skill in my own home. Brandon: Ah, when you really master it, call me and help me do that with my own son as well. No, I'm kidding. I see you and joking aside, something I am also working on, so I really I receive that. Carrie, bring us home. What's something or someone you are learning about or from? Guest: So I would say that I am really learning about the work-life balance and really trying to focus my time during work hours on work and when it's time to be home, that I am fully home and enjoying my family. I'm a new grandma to two little babes, with one on the way, so I'll be the grandma of three soon. Diving into that to be able to balance that and be the example for my kids so that they understand how important it is to have that balance. And I watch people around me and I try to learn from them and and kind of follow suit as much and as often as I can. So, again, that mentoring is really important and I'm trying to carry that through into not just my home life, but at work as well, trying to encourage other others to also have that work-life balance as well. Brandon: Oh, I see you. Another phone call that needs to be made then once you master this, let me know how to do it. Oh, thank you three for this conversation. I was nervous because one, it's hard to get all three people in a room and to make sure we were able to share space and hear all of the incredible thinking, ideas, and research that you've done. And I'm really proud of what we were able to do in this short time and I think the listeners are going to really enjoy this episode. So thank you for your time, for your work, for your commitment to our kids, the gentle way that you approach this topic and make sure that our educators feel seen and heard in service of our kids being seen and heard. So thank you again and thank you everyone for listening to this episode of Leading Multilingual Learning, powered by Medley Learning.