Our guest Dr. Melissa Kanney is the English Language Development Supervisor for Prince George's County Public Schools in Maryland. Prince George's County is home to America's 12th largest ELD program, supporting over 33,000 Multilingual Learners. Dr. Kanney has served in many roles within the district, including as a teacher, coach, and instructional specialist. She earned both her Master's in Teaching English for Speakers of Other Languages and her Doctorate in Educational Leadership and Policy Development from the University of Maryland, and is currently pursuing her National Board Certification (NBCT) in English as a New Language.
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 that are shaping better education for multilingual learners. And today, I'm excited to welcome Dr. Melissa Caney to the podcast. Brandon: Dr. Caney currently serves as the English Language Development supervisor for Prince George County Public Schools, home to the nation's 12th largest ELD program, supporting over 33,000 multilingual learners. She has an extensive background within the district and the ELD office, having served in various roles including teacher, coach, instructional specialist, and she has, of course, earned her master's in teaching English for speakers of other language and her doctorate in educational leadership and policy development from the University of Maryland. She is currently pursuing her National Board Certification in English as a new language. That is a big bio with a lot of commitment and support to Prince George County, which we love. Welcome to the podcast. Melissa: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Brandon: I'm really excited to learn from you today and talk about your work, but before we dive in, I always ask the same question of our guest. You have a really impressive bio, and we have to put together this really comprehensive one-paragraph, but what is one thing that never makes it into the bio that you're like, I'm really proud of this, or this is something I wish more people knew about? Melissa: One thing, I will always go back to my student, Louise, who's the reason I'm still here today. Louise came to me in third grade not being able to read. He was on a pre-primer level. And it was my challenge throughout the year to make Louise grow, maybe not to third grade. And I still remember when he was in high school, a teacher I had taught with came back and she's like, "I saw Louise!" And I was like, "You saw Louise? Louise is still in school, he hasn't dropped out." And so I think it's just having students like Louise and knowing that a student's challenges, nothing but that, a challenge that we as educators have to solve. So I've taken that and carried that on into every position I've been in. Brandon: I love that. I have a few of those that I think about often too. They sort of anchor the experience. They anchor the why. They were also a reminder that we're good at this. We have a lot—we take a lot of losses in this work. And that's the hard part, but there's these really yummy moments that are like, I can I do really good things and I have impact. I see you. All right. Brandon: We've had really incredible guests on the show, but it's going to be a really interesting conversation for our listeners because we get to talk to you driving real strategy in a really large and complex district. So, let's talk about Prince George and the scope, right? Prince George's County serves over 34,000 multilingual learners. Can you give our listeners a sense of the linguistic landscape? Like how many languages, what's the fastest growing population, and all the sort of mix and shapes that impact the decisions your team is making? Melissa: So, currently Prince George's County actually has 33,000 multilingual learners, so we decreased from last year. Last year we were at about 35,000 and so due to the political landscape, we do see fewer students this school year. But our students come from over 116 countries and speak over 120 different languages, which makes us very diverse. In many bilingual districts, it's predominantly Spanish and English, and in many of our schools, they have to figure out how to navigate Spanish, French, Pashto, Dari, Arabic. But I think the diversity makes us an asset. And helping to see the different cultures, learn about the students, and it just brings Prince George's County to what it is, a welcome place for all students. Brandon: That's really special. Yeah, you're right. Oftentimes we're talking to leaders and there's a dominant language in the community. What you have with such diversity is this really interesting mix of languages across a spectrum, which on a planning level, on an intellectual level is really exciting and beautiful and special and unique. But on a planning level, for a district your size, can create real complexity, particularly when you're thinking about system-wide consistency. One school can look really different than another school a few miles away. How do you think about that when you're planning for consistency across the entire ecosystem? Melissa: So I think Prince George's County, when you talk about 10 miles away, our district, we talk about it in hours. It can take about an hour to get from the northern end of the county to the southern end of the county and about an hour, maybe 45 minutes to get from east to west. Scaling is important, but also trying to make things that meet the needs of the different populations. We used to have centers and our multilingual learners were bused to different locations. We now have a multilingual learner in every school in Prince George's County. That's over 200 schools. But it's really a challenge with creating the resources and structures. So what we've created curriculum, I'm sure across the nation, the challenge has been with teacher vacancies and then having conditional teachers or we have a resident teacher program. So we've created resources specifically for our language development that we feel anybody can do with all of the resources. And then we do the training. Our training is in the evening because it's hard to do training during the school day. But then also the train the trainer, getting out there into the schools. But one of the things I'm most proud of in our district, we created our key ELD strategies. We started with three in the middle of COVID. We wanted to do something that if every school did that we would see more success for our multilingual learners. We tried things like SIOP, and SIOP is good, but it's very cumbersome, and we wanted to make it meaningful for our teachers. And so our key ELD strategies include things like visuals, sentence frames, learning by doing, direct vocabulary instruction, collaborative conversations, modified graphic organizers, and building background knowledge. And they seem like they're just the buzzwords for ELD, but when you're talking to all the classroom teachers, we wanted to make them the things that our teachers could do. So we started with three, we went to six. We trained our ELD teachers so they knew what they were. Then we tried to get our ELD teachers to train schools. We went out and trained schools, and we've really been working on getting them into the curriculum. And so it created a common language across the district. Everybody knows these are our key ELD strategies, and everybody uses them. Brandon: That's really special. And I like this intentional focus. And what I'm also hearing too is like, we didn't try to do everything at once. We started with three, we kept, we assessed to see implementation success, and then continued to grow the strategies as the success and practice started to grow. Fair assumption? Melissa: Yes. And it also gave schools when they were doing their school improvement plans, something to latch on to, like, "Oh, we can observe our teachers with this strategy," and it gave them something to really work towards. Brandon: That's really helpful because it, you know, you're driving it for classroom practice, but it becomes a leverage point for our principals to use as they're thinking about their own planning for success. Really smart, helpful strategy. I think what you're also describing, and I'm interested in this, like in a lot of our districts, ELD is just its own department with its own students. You're working really hard to make ELD pedagogical strategies part of the larger ecosystem, the school improvement strategy. At its core, this is a look for for every student that we know helps our multilingual learners. Tell me how you work to make this everyone's responsibility for lack of a better word. It's not just the ESOL team, but something we're all thinking about. Melissa: So we have grown astronomically in our population over the last 10, 20 years. And I think that's allowed us to go from the multilingual learners being the responsibility of the ELD office to they're the responsibility of everybody. So as I shared, we had centers and now our multilingual learners are in every school. They pretty much hit every classroom, every content. And so it can't be just about language instruction. We have to really think about the systems and how are we setting things up for the success for our students. So, a lot of times that's about relationships and helping to build capacity and helping for everybody to see that our multilingual learners are everybody's responsibility. But I think also just making sure that equity is at the forefront and that if everybody's looking at their data, oftentimes our active MLs, those who are requiring language, don't perform on assessments the way we would want them to. But once our MLs have exited, they are outperforming their native speakers, which is comparable across the district. Brandon: Across the country. Yeah, that's so funny that you mentioned this. I was just in Worcester talking to an ML leader there, and like we need to be reminding people the success of our kids once they are out of identification, right? Like this is so real. I'm so happy you brought it up. But continue. Sorry to cut you off. Melissa: And so I think it's helping to get everybody to see that and helping to see that our students are in a stage where they're acquiring language. We want them to see their language as an asset, but once they acquire language, they're going to be an asset for our district. And so let's all work together. It could be, how do we get interpreters? How do we make sure that our students can access transportation? How do we make sure that the staffing is correct? Everything has to work together to make sure that an ML program is what it needs to be. Brandon: I see you. I love this and it's interesting, this has been a theme for us this season, really talking about the really hard work of bringing our kids into every part of the system. And for a community like yours, where you've seen this growth, it's a change in what Prince George County looks like today than what it looked like 10 years ago, the growth of multilingual learners in that space. That's a big transition for some of the legacy educators who have been in the system and feeling that shift and also growing with the changing population. When your ELD team sits down with content area departments, when you're thinking about that content work with math or science or social studies, you're co-planning for multilingual learners, what does that process look like? And how long did it take to build those relationships to the point where it actually works, where the strategies are coming to life? Melissa: Like you shared, English Language Development is its own content. We're trying to develop our students' language, but it's also very important that we make sure that the supports are in the curriculum. And so I do think our key ELD strategies helped, but I will share sometimes it's a challenge, sometimes it's easy. People always talk about the stages of teaming. You have to come together, you have to storm, form to conform and figure out what you're working on together. And I think when we worked with our, I'll use our elementary mathematics team, it didn't happen overnight. They had the content knowledge that we didn't understand. We had the language development knowledge, and we wanted to figure out how to make it work for our teachers. So we had to struggle through it. We had to come to a consensus that they were knowledgeable, we were knowledgeable, but we were seeing things differently, and just figure out what worked. And so, I think it's just taking the time to work together. We have enhanced things, we've incorporated things into our curriculum with resources. It's, I think it's just work and and setting aside time. But once you develop those relationships and create something together, you can then turn it over and work with another team. I just met with the vocal music team that is eager to incorporate something into their... and they're at the beginning stages. So I'm like, okay, your teachers probably need just an introduction to who our students are, and then let's work together, work with one of your teachers and figure out what makes most sense for them. Brandon: This is great. Your leadership style and thinking is so visible. I think when we're talking about giving grace in process for people to feel the discomfort of change, figure out the new dynamics of this new group and this new team that we're forging. You know, like we're going to do this a little differently with different people at the table and to have whatever their natural response is. It's, I remember feeling this as a school leader too, like, it's not about me. This is something historical for everyone in the room around what happens when change is put on the table. And then people will adapt, you know, they will adapt. And that is a parallel process that's happening for a lot of our kids who are experiencing a big change and being asked to do something different than they've done before. And then going through the motions that then require them to adapt. Melissa: And I hate to give few cliches, but people always say them, change is the only thing that's constant, and we have to be comfortable with discomfort. So if we're going to try and do something new, it's going to require some discomfort, but if we know what our ultimate goal is, we can work together and create something amazing. Brandon: I agree. I'm also going to reach out to you and hear how this is going with your arts department too. I want to know. Melissa: I just had the meeting this morning and I'm very excited about it. Brandon: That's really good to hear. It's important. It's like ELD supports, services, pedagogical strategies existing everywhere. And that is what you are describing. Like, yep, we got champions in the math department, we're going to build champions in our arts department, like everywhere we go, there are people who feel expert in the ability to serve our kids. I want to talk to you about the thing that I think, I think stresses all system leaders out a little bit, which is just the hiring landscape in this moment. Like, I know you're always actively recruiting ESOL teachers. What does the landscape look like right now? How are you navigating it? Tell me some of the things that are on your mind. Melissa: So, just a little interesting fact about me, I actually have a background in human resources management. So sometimes my chief is always like, "Remember, your job's in curriculum and instruction. Let human resources do their job." But we actively recruit, screen, and hire for English language development. And when our multilingual learners were on the rise, we were creating programs with universities so that we could help transition our classroom teachers into ELD teachers. And this past school year, our superintendent recruited, recruited, and we pretty much ended the year with the lowest number of vacancies. It was great, but we also had many teachers who had less experience than previous. So it required a lot of our coaches to go out, but I think we have a good group of people who are actively interested in supporting our students. But I think developing the pipelines, this morning I was just downstairs, we have the university partnerships and we are creating people who can become certified through our partnership with the University of Maryland. And they're like, "But can you pay for us to finish and get a master's?" And I was like, "Well, I don't know, but I'll look into it." And so I think just having that. From that, we've created a pathway for them to get a doctorate where they then explore and solve problems in our district. So I call them our little infiltrators. They go around and dig into and try to find the problem of practices in our district and then study them in depth for about three years and give us potential solutions that we can implement in the district. Now, I know that had nothing to do with staffing, but I think all of those programs helped to retain because we've created pathways for leadership, for actively implementing your own solutions. It just is something we've done. Brandon: No, it's totally connected and you're right. You can see your HR, your HR brain in action. Like that is why we stay. You made a choice. Like you moved from the classroom into leadership and you found that journey. I've done the same. And sometimes those feel really hard to see and sometimes we get to work in districts where that pathway feels like it's, not only is it clear, but it's desired. Like people want to see us stay and be homegrown. And it's clear that's something you guys are thinking about deeply. I also want to learn more about this PhD program. Melissa: Yes. Brandon: Fascinating. I'm curious too, you know, one of the things that, you know, drives retention is the same thing that drives great instruction, which is professional development that has meaning in an educator's life but also has impact in a kid's life. For general education teachers who have multilingual learners in their classroom but may not have like regular ELD training, how are you thinking about that? How does your office sort of approach that bridge? Melissa: So we have worked regularly, mainly with math and RELA, reading English language arts, to make sure that we're a part of their professional development, so that it's not something extra. Again, our key ELD strategies, but making sure that they're integrated in, as well as working with schools. So, we trained all of our classroom or our ELD teachers on the key ELD strategies and so helping them to get it out to our content teachers through collaborative planning, through a conversation in the hallway, just making sure that it's not seen that the multilingual learner is just the responsibility of the ELD department, but they are the responsibility of all. It's a never-ending job, but I think it's something that our department really sees as very important. Brandon: Makes sense. And thoughtful strategy to doing that. Like just building the buy-in and the and the momentum. Is there anything that sort of sticks with you, sort of a before and after that you've seen that might sort of inspire some thinking today, when you've seen educators go through that ELD professional development? Melissa: So, we through one of our vendors did a cultural immersion experience. We did two separate days, one for a Latino experience and another for an Afghani experience. And the participants spend the day and go around to different stores, organizations that support Latinos or Afghanis. They may go to a religious organization. And that was probably the most eye-opening. So a group of about five people travel together to these sites and I participated and the conversations in the car were the most meaningful. So sometimes we think it's about the sit and the get and the getting, but really it was the 15 minutes from one location to the other and allowing the person to be like, "I didn't know," and having that natural reflection. Brandon: Funny that you say this. One, I can imagine that to be so true. The some of the most magical moments happen after the PD, outside of the PD where we get to... protocols are great and we, listen, I love a protocol. Give me a sticky note and a white paper and I will... I want us walking around a room doing the whole thing. But when people feel like they got something, they got enough that they can take with them outside, and then the conversation continues, that's as a leader when we know we've done good work. Melissa: Yes. When and I also think when you pull on their hearts. When they can see that it's a human that they're trying to impact, it makes a greater difference. Brandon: I 100%. Yeah, it it personalizes the entire experience differently. I'll also tell you this, this is totally anecdotal, but I did recently read a study as and this is me as a dad of a nine-year-old, which is like the best conversations with your child can happen in the car. There's something about like the vulnerability of the car ride. This study linked it to like because your child doesn't have to make eye contact with you because you're driving. But like in those moments, it's like people something about this like the little the little square box and like we're stuck together that like you end up getting the most, in Spanish I'll say it like the most chisme, the sort of the real talk in a way that I think is very true for my house. And also I can reflect back to was very true when I was leading a school and on the school bus with my teachers and I'd get all the the real thinking at the same time too. Melissa: Yes, maybe we should do traveling PD. Brandon: Melissa, I think we have to end the podcast now and start planning a traveling PD series, but the work is happening on the bus. I love this. This is great. Brandon: I want to talk to you a little bit and this is a big shift and one that's maybe not as light but really important. You know, Prince George County is in the DC Metro area. It means your families are navigating a complex landscape of immigration policy, housing, economic pressures. This is the reality of, you know, urban districts right now. But how does that broader context shape or change the ELD team's work and and the work that you've been up to? Melissa: Oh, that's a loaded question. I think with the political context, it's been a little harder over the last two years. And I think just being aware, but also being super supportive. So with the potential for immigration enforcement and just the fear, because of the relationships we had built with our parents, we saw an impact on students' attendance, but not as much. And though all international students or immigrants are not multilingual learners, I still felt the need and that it was my responsibility to advocate for them. And so we did workshops for parents, things to just help them understand that we were there to support them. But I think also just making sure that the things things are equitable and that we're supporting students from our district to other districts. And then just being an advocate. So when there's hurdles, our students were registering and one thing was being done differently in another district than our district. And so I said, "Well, that's inequitable. Let's bring us all together and see how we can be similar within the constraints of our different administrative procedures and policies." And so I think just being very aware that we have a very transient population and how do we support them but make sure that they're getting the best education in the DMV with all of us supporting each other. Brandon: Thank you for sharing that. And I I get that it's just it's all so complicated. And at the end of the day, like our work is to create high quality, high impact instructional moments for kids. That does require, you know, respectfully, like butts in seats, our kids have to show up for the learning to take shape. And so we're thinking about all of that in real time. This might be the first time I've heard someone talk about like the cross-district collaboration that's necessary. With so many of our kids, not all our kids, but a lot of our kids because they happen, they tend to be transient and maybe extra transient in this moment. And so thinking about how we sort of are working together, yes, within our district, but the the connection outside of our district and around our district to make sure we're creating consistency for kids. Melissa: And I think also in Maryland, I have a very unique position. I am the largest or comparable in size to Montgomery County, but many of the other districts are where I was 10 years ago. And so there's a lot of lessons to share, but also I think smaller districts can do innovative things that if we don't collaborate together, just because they're smaller doesn't mean I can't learn from them. Brandon: Amen. Those small districts can move sometimes much faster than our big districts. I'm saying this having come from New York City, there's a lot to learn. It's pretty tender that you're also holding that like 10 years ago your population was their size. This is not about a district, this is about all of us serving kids wherever they are. Melissa: Yes. Brandon: Melissa, I want to talk to you forever and I want to keep following your work and learning from you and I'm going to have to like come to Prince George and see how you're doing some of this interesting professional development work. But the podcast eventually has to end. And so, I have hit my final question. But how we like to end this, actually sort of beautifully to where we where we just were, is like we are always learning. We are in a learning journey. And as leaders, we're also advancing the strategies, the solutions, the infrastructure that allows learning to take shape. So, in parallel process, what's something or someone or something that you're learning about or learning from right now? Melissa: So I had the pleasure of starting a new position last year, my Multilingual Family Engagement Specialist, new to our district. And she is truly phenomenal. But the thing that she has shown me is the importance of family voice. And we started a family engagement steering committee that we meet with about every other month. And it's become the most meaningful group of people. There's about 30 of us, about 11 come to each meeting, but there's two students and family and central office staff, and I always yearn to hear when the young gentleman shares out or the mother shares, and it's done in English with Spanish interpretation or the interpretation needed for the families. But the families never feel afraid to speak out and share their voice. And so I think really figuring out ways that we can make sure that our families are a partner in developing our education for our students because they have a lot to share. Brandon: I love that. You are learning from families and learning from students. I will share this before we close too. As an young person, I think one of the most transformational experiences I had was getting to like serve on a youth leadership body. Similar to what you're describing, like a place that just centered me, anchored me in my own leadership. I was like, "Oh, I I have a voice and someone's listening and I can create change." It required someone to listen, which is what you're doing, Melissa. But I I hold really deeply, like I probably wouldn't be here doing this had I not had this experience of sort of feeling my own power. So I really like that you are holding that space as a place to learn from. It has ripple effects. Melissa: I love it. And I'm so glad to hear because I'm hoping that our students that we have join our team each year will have that same effect as they go into their future. Brandon: I love this. It has been so great to meet you, so great to have you on today. Thank you so much for your time and for your work and for your commitment to our kids. And thanks to everyone for listening to this episode. Thanks Melissa for a great conversation and we'll see you next time on Leading Multilingual Learning, powered by Medley Learning.