La combinación de las inversiones públicas en el sistema de la Universidad de California y la actitud hospitalaria del estado hacia la inmigración han creado una economía dinámica y dotada de tecnología que es la  de todos los estados norteamericanos. Su  también refleja ese dinamismo, y atiende a . En 2021, California matriculó a más estudiantes EL en grados de Kínder a 12 que .

Sin embargo, de 1998 a 2016, en medio de , las escuelas del estado contradijeron su reputación cosmopolita, promulgando una normativa para que se enseñara exclusivamente en inglés a los estudiantes EL. Como era de esperar, la política hizo poco para cambiar la trayectoria demográfica del estado y .

Por esa razón, en el año 2016, los votantes de California aprobaron la Proposición 58 en un referéndum que volvía a plantear la posibilidad de la educación bilingüe para los EL de California. Los partidarios promovieron la medida como una oportunidad para que el estado ofreciera un sistema escolar multilingüe acorde con su reputación de sociedad plural y diversa que preparara a los estudiantes para prosperar en la economía global.

Este artículo es el primero en una serie de The 74 sobre los esfuerzos de California por construir un sistema educativo bilingüe digno de su reputación de diversidad cultural. 

Ocho años después de la aprobación de la Proposición 58, es. La eliminación activa de idiomas en las aulas del estado durante casi dos décadas ha dado lugar a innumerables desafíos. Aun así, la adopción del bilingüismo por parte del estado ha acercado la narrativa pública . California lanzó el , que ahora se ha extendido a nivel nacional, y que otorga reconocimiento público a los graduados de Kínder hasta el grado 12 que demuestren competencia en más de un idioma. Esfuerzos de este tipo son los que están cambiando el discurso público en California sobre los idiomas y aumentando la demanda de oportunidades de aprendizaje bilingüe.

Reductos bilingües en una era monolingüe

En 1998, cuando California adoptó la Proposición 58 y su política de enseñar únicamente en inglés,  daban a entender que aproximadamente la mitad de los votantes latinos apoyaban el mandato. Las encuestas a pie de urna posteriores sugerían , pero la medida se aprobó igualmente.

El número de estudiantes EL en aulas de educación bilingüe . Aunque la nueva política de enseñar sólo en inglés permitía a las comunidades ofrecer educación bilingüe si un número suficiente de padres de estudiantes EL optaban por no participar en una educación exclusivamente en inglés, sólo una pequeña parte de las  pudo alcanzar ese umbral. El español, el coreano, el japonés, el cantonés y otros idiomas que no fueran el inglés desaparecieron de las escuelas.

Pero la decisión del estado no borró el deseo de muchos californianos de que se reconocieran y se trabajaran en la escuela las habilidades bilingües que sus hijos empezaban a demostrar. La persistente demanda de los padres latinos puso en marcha y/o mantuvo programas bilingües y de inmersión en dos idiomas, como el campus en Burlington del Camino Nuevo Charter Academy de Los Ángeles.

La escuela abrió sus puertas en el año 2000; el interés de la comunidad por el bilingüismo empujó a los líderes a dar prioridad al desarrollo de los alumnos tanto en inglés como en español. “Recibíamos niños que venían de programas que estaban por toda la ciudad”, dice la ex directora general de Camino Nuevo, Ana Ponce. “Y los padres querían que sus hijos mantuvieran su lengua materna. No estábamos sujetos a las limitaciones de la Proposición 227 porque éramos una escuela chárter, así que nos embarcamos en la exploración de diferentes modelos de educación bilingüe”.

La escuela optó por un modelo de inmersión en dos idiomas (o DLI, por sus siglas en inglés) que comienza con la mayoría de la enseñanza en español y aumenta paulatinamente la enseñanza en inglés hasta que los dos idiomas están equilibrados en los últimos grados de primaria. Décadas más tarde, el campus del centro de Los Ángeles bulle con conversaciones que cambian del español al inglés. Los alumnos de cuarto grado practican en parejas problemas de división en su clase de matemáticas jugando a Piedra, Papel o Tijeras para decidir quién va primero.

“Ojalá, Dios quiera que no, que no desaparezcan estas escuelas, ¿verdad? Porque les ayuda mucho a nuestros hijos de verdad”, comenta Maribel Martínez, una madre de Camino Nuevo desde hace 13 años. “No hablo mal de las [escuelas] del distrito, sé que también enseñan bien, pero pues el único error es de que pues quitaron el bilingüe… los dos idiomas valen mucho y más”.

Parte de ese valor es de carácter académico. Las investigaciones sugieren que los programas de inmersión en dos idiomas son la mejor manera de apoyar a los jóvenes que no son hablantes nativos de inglés en las escuelas de Estados Unidos. Pero los padres de la escuela Camino dicen que ésta es sólo una de las razones por las que valoran las destrezas emergentes de sus hijos en español e inglés. El primer hijo de Gloribel Reyes empezó en la escuela hace veinte años y el menor está matriculado en cuarto grado. “Es muy importante que los niños pues siempre tengan ese aprendizaje de lo que es el español y el bilingüe”, precisa, “porque si ellos aprenden nada más el inglés, pues se les va olvidando [el español], que es lo que hablamos los papás, porque si unos papás no hablamos[…] inglés, entonces ¿cómo nos podemos comunicar con ellos?”

Martínez está de acuerdo, y señala que el bilingüismo de la escuela facilita a las familias hispanohablantes el contacto con los maestros y el personal. Es decir, el esfuerzo de Burlington por contratar a personal para el programa DLI durante décadas ha dado lugar a una plantilla totalmente bilingüe.

Tras años de servicio como escuela al frente de la educación bilingüe, Camino Nuevo se ha convertido en una cantera bilingüe de la que otras escuelas pueden sacar provecho. Kylie Rector, Directora de Biliteracidad y Estudiantes EL de Camino Nuevo, dice que “el entusiasmo por invertir más en educación bilingüe” ha atraído a la escuela administradores de distintos distritos, desde San Diego hasta el norte de California.

No obstante, aunque se están reanudando programas bilingües y de inmersión en dos idiomas por todo el estado, en ningún lugar están creciendo lo suficientemente rápido como para cumplir con  de construir un sistema de al menos 1.600 programas de DLI para hacer que “la mitad de todos los estudiantes de Kínder a grado 12… participen en programas que lleven a la competencia en dos o más idiomas”. El año pasado, el estado dedicó  para poner en marcha nuevas escuelas de DLI; el estado calcula que con este dinero se crearán  nuevos.

Esto se debe, en parte, a que la prohibición durante dieciocho años de la mayoría de los programas bilingües en California prácticamente eliminó el mercado laboral para los maestros bilingües. Es por eso que los sistemas escolares de Kínder a grado 12 produjeron más graduados monolingües, cuyo idioma dominante fue el inglés, y por esta razón también los programas de formación de maestros bilingües del estado cerraron en gran medida.

Esto supone para los dirigentes de California el problema de la gallina y el huevo. No pueden aumentar las aulas bilingües en todo el estado sin más profesores bilingües, pero el sistema estatal de enseñanza primaria y secundaria sigue siendo mayoritariamente sólo en inglés y no está produciendo suficientes graduados bilingües para aumentar rápidamente la diversidad lingüística del profesorado del estado. Como resultado, el cuerpo docente de Kínder a grado 12 de California es mucho más blanco y monolingüe en su lengua materna, el inglés, que la población estudiantil primaria y secundaria de California.  los alumnos de Kínder a grado 12 de California.

El aumento de la demanda de educadores bilingües también ha hecho que el personal de Camino Nuevo sea muy valioso en el sector de la educación pública de California. Algunos antiguos empleados de Camino Nuevo han acabado fundando sus propias escuelas bilingües, como , fundadora de Yu Ming Public Charter School. Otros  en  y otros  de . Y otros trabajan en defensa de la educación en organizaciones sin fines de lucro como ,,, y la  Chavez.

La polinización cruzada del bilingüismo en el condado de San Diego

A sólo diez millas en carro del cruce fronterizo de San Ysidro entre Estados Unidos y México, el campus de Chula Vista Learning Community Charter School (CVLCC) es otro hervidero de bilingüismo. La escuela fue fundada por el Distrito Escolar Unificado de Chula Vista en 1998 como una forma de mantener las opciones bilingües una vez que llegó el mandato estatal de enseñar exclusivamente en inglés.

Eddie Caballero se incorporó a CVLCC un año después como profesor de quinto grado. “Fue un comienzo difícil”, asegura, ya que la escuela luchaba por centrar sus enfoques de instrucción académica y lingüística. Pero ya para 2004, la escuela se había unido en torno a una visión: poner énfasis adicional en las habilidades básicas de alfabetización temprana en ambos idiomas .

En 2005, Caballero se trasladó al Distrito Escolar Unificado de San Diego para trabajar en puestos administrativos. En 2008, varias familias de estudiantes EL se estaban organizando para firmar exenciones con el fin de iniciar un programa de educación bilingüe en Sherman Elementary, en la zona este de San Diego. La escuela necesitaba un educador bilingüe con experiencia; Caballero encajaba a la perfección. Estaba ansioso por utilizar lo que había aprendido en CVLCC para replicar la educación bilingüe de alta calidad, pero ahora a nivel de distrito.

Al igual que en CVLCC, “no tuvimos éxito inmediatamente”, dice Caballero. Avisa que cualquier programa de educación bilingüe no tendrá éxito automáticamente por el mero hecho de ser bilingüe. Con demasiada frecuencia, advierte, los responsables de los distritos piensan que pueden “reinventar” sus escuelas lanzando programas de DLI, “pero no, hay que implementarlo con cuidado”. Esto requiere una planeación cuidadosa en torno al plan de estudios, la dotación de personal, los esfuerzos de participación familiar y mucho más. Es por eso que, en 2016, Caballero contrató a Nicole Enriquez, ex maestra de CVLCC, para ser su subdirectora; ella asumió el papel de directora cuando él dejó el Distrito Escolar Unificado de San Diego.

Ahora, en 2024, Caballero está de vuelta como director general de CVLCC, que sigue sirviendo como motor para el ecosistema local de educación bilingüe. Precisa que los maestros bilingües suelen acudir a su escuela desde distritos cercanos con el objetivo de desarrollar su experiencia enseñando en entornos bilingües o de inmersión en dos idiomas. Sin embargo, muchos se van al cabo de cinco años, porque quedarse más tiempo les costaría la antigüedad contractual en los distritos donde empezaron su carrera.

“CVLCC es una escuela bilingüe ejemplar que no sólo tiene un plan de estudios cultural y lingüísticamente sensible, sino que también prepara la conciencia crítica global de los estudiantes a través de enfoques innovadores e impactantes”, precisa Cristina Alfaro. “En sus inicios… la llamábamos la Escuela de los Sueños”.

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En los 26 años transcurridos desde que los votantes de California inauguraron la era monolingüe en su estado -y ocho años después de que acabaran con ella- está claro que el terreno de la opinión pública ha cambiado. Las encuestas realizadas antes del referéndum de la Proposición 58 de 2016 revelaban que . 

 que tuvo lugar en el 2023 encontró que el 65 por ciento de las familias latinas “inscribirían a sus hijos en un programa bilingüe si estuviera disponible”. En otra encuesta realizada en 2023 entre californianos mayoritariamente hispanohablantes,  el 59 por ciento de los encuestados consideraba el “acceso a programas bilingües” una prioridad “esencial” o “alta” para sus familias.

Baluartes bilingües como CVLCC y Camino Nuevo son recursos esenciales para ayudar a que esa esperanza sea realista para más de esas familias. “Soy chicana de segunda generación”, dice la directora Enríquez de la escuela Sherman. “Y esta generación de padres dice cosas como: ‘Yo nunca tuve esta oportunidad cuando era niño. Ojalá pudiera hablar más español. Quiero que mis hijos puedan ser bilingües, que tengan la oportunidad que yo nunca tuve’. ¡Y yo también soy así! Yo traje a mis hijos aquí, a través de Sherman, para que pudieran ser bilingües”.

California is, by almost every measure, one of the United States’ most diverse and vibrant states. The country’s , it also has . 

The combination of public investments in the University of California system and the state’s welcoming approach to immigration have created a dynamic, technology-infused economy that is the of any U.S. state. Its also reflects that dynamism, serving . In 2021, California enrolled more K–12 ELs than . 

And yet, from 1998 to 2016, the state’s schools belied its cosmopolitan reputation, enacting an English-only mandate for ELs amid a . Unsurprisingly, the policy did little to change the state’s demographic trajectory — and . 

That’s why California voters passed Proposition 58 in 2016, a referendum that reopened the possibility of bilingual education for California’s ELs. Supporters sold the measure as an opportunity for the state to deliver a multilingual school system befitting its reputation as a plural and diverse society preparing students to succeed in the global economy. 

This is the first in The 74‘s series on California’s effort to build a bilingual education system worthy of its culturally diverse reputation. 

Eight years after Prop. 58’s passage, . Nearly two decades of actively subtracting languages from the state’s classrooms created myriad challenges. And yet, the state’s embrace of bilingualism has brought public narratives closer to . California launched the now-national , which provides public recognition for K–12 graduates who demonstrate proficiency in more than one language. Efforts like these are changing California’s public discourse around languages and increasing demand for bilingual learning opportunities. 

Part 1: An 18- year ban on Bilingual Education in California begins

When Proposition 227 made California an English-only state in 1998, suggested that roughly half of Latino voters supported the move. Subsequent exit polls suggested, but the measure passed all the same. 

The number of ELs in bilingual education classrooms . While the new English-only policy permitted communities to offer bilingual education if enough ELs’ parents “opted out” of English-only education, only a small fraction of were able to meet that threshold. Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Cantonese, and other non-English languages vanished from schools. 

But the state’s decision didn’t erase many Californians’ desire to have their children’s emerging bilingual abilities recognized and cultivated at school. Persistent demand from Latino parents launched and/or maintained bilingual and DLI programs, such as Los Angeles’ Camino Nuevo Charter Academy’s Burlington campus. 

The school opened in 2000; community interest in bilingualism pushed leaders to prioritize students’ development in both English and Spanish. “We were getting kids that were coming from programs that were all over the city,” says former Camino Nuevo CEO Ana Ponce. “And parents wanted their kids to keep their native language. We were not bound by Proposition 227’s limitations because we were a charter, so we embarked on exploring different bilingual education models.” 

The school settled on a DLI model that begins with a majority of instruction in Spanish and gradually increases English-language instruction until the languages are evenly balanced in later elementary grades. Decades later, the Central Los Angeles campus effervesces with chatter swinging from Spanish to English. Fourth-graders pair off to practice division problems in math class to decide who goes first by playing Rock, Paper, Scissors or Piedra, Papel, Tijeras. 

“I hope that God keeps these schools from disappearing, because they really help our children,” says 13-year Camino Nuevo parent Maribel Martinez in Spanish. “I don’t want to talk down the district’s schools, they also teach well, but their big mistake was cutting bilingual education…two languages are worth so much.” 

Some of that value is academic. Research suggests that dual language immersion programs are the best way to support young, non-native English speakers in U.S. schools. But Camino parents say that this is only one of the reasons they prize their children’s emerging Spanish and English skills. Gloribel Reyes’ first child started at the school twenty years ago and her youngest is enrolled in fourth grade. “It’s very important that the children learn both Spanish and English,” she says in Spanish, “because if they only learn English, they forget their own language, the language their parents speak. Some of their parents don’t speak English—how can we speak with them?”

Martinez agrees—and notes that the school’s bilingualism makes it easier for Spanish-dominant families to engage with teachers and staff. That is, decades of hiring to staff Burlington’s DLI program have produced a fully bilingual staff. 

After years of serving as a bilingual outpost, Camino Nuevo has become a bilingual quarry for other schools to mine. Kylie Rector, Camino Nuevo’s Director of Biliteracy and English Learners, says that “the buzz to invest more in bilingual education” has brought administrators from districts from San Diego to Northern California to the school. 

Still, while bilingual and dual language immersion (DLI) programs are relaunching across the state, they are not growing anywhere fast enough to meet of building a system of at least 1,600 DLI programs to have “half of all K–12 students…participate in programs leading to proficiency in two or more languages.” Last year, the state devoted for launching new DLI schools — the state estimates it will produce . 

This is partly because California’s eighteen-year ban on most bilingual programs also flatlined the job market for bilingual teachers. This meant that K–12 school systems produced more monolingual, English-dominant graduates, and it meant that the state’s bilingual teacher training programs largely shuttered. 

This presents California leaders with a chicken-and-egg problem. They cannot grow bilingual classrooms around the state without more bilingual teachers, but the state’s K–12 system remains mostly English-only and is not producing enough bilingual graduates to rapidly grow the linguistic diversity of the state’s teaching force. As a result, California’s K–12 teaching force is much whiter and more native English-speaking monolingual than California’s K–12 student body. . 

The increased demand for bilingual educators has also made Camino Nuevo staff valuable across California’s public education sector. Some erstwhile Camino Nuevo employees have gone on to launch dual language schools of their own, like Yu Ming Public Charter School founder . Others are in and other . Still others are working in education advocacy at non-profit organizations like , , , , and the . 

Cross-Pollinating Bilingualism in San Diego County

Just a ten mile drive from the U.S.-Mexico San Ysidro border crossing, Chula Vista Learning Community Charter School’s (CVLCC) campus is another hotbed of bilingualism. The school was founded by the Chula Vista Unified School District in 1998 as a way to maintain bilingual options once the state’s English-only mandate arrived. 

Eddie Caballero joined CVLCC a year later as a 5th grade teacher. “It was a rough start,” he says, as the school struggled to focus its academic and linguistic instructional approaches. But by 2004, the school had coalesced around a vision — putting extra campus emphasis on foundational early literacy skills in both languages . 

In 2005, Caballero moved to San Diego Unified School District to work in administrative roles. In 2008, a number of families of ELs were organizing to sign waivers to start a bilingual education program at Sherman Elementary, on San Diego’s east side. The school needed an experienced bilingual educator; Caballero was a natural fit. He was eager to use what he’d learned at CVLCC to replicate high-quality bilingual education — now in a district setting. 

Just as at CVLCC, “We didn’t see success immediately,” Caballero says. He warns that just any bilingual education program won’t automatically succeed just by virtue of being bilingual. Too often, he warns, district leaders think they can “rebrand” their schools by launching DLI programs, “but no, you have to implement it carefully.” This requires careful planning around curriculum, staffing, family engagement efforts, and much more. That’s why, in 2016, Caballero hired former CVLCC teacher Nicole Enriquez to be his assistant principal; she stepped in as principal when he left San Diego Unified. 

Now, in 2024, Caballero is back as CVLCC’s CEO, which continues to serve as a flywheel for the local bilingual education ecosystem. He says that bilingual teachers often come to his school from nearby districts with the goal of developing their expertise teaching in bilingual or DLI settings. However, many leave after five years, because staying longer would cost them contractual seniority back in the districts where they began their careers. 

“CVLCC is an exemplary dual language school that not only has a culturally and linguistically responsive curriculum—but also prepares students’ global critical consciousness through innovative and impactful approaches,” says Cristina Alfaro. “At its inception…we called it the Dream School.”

Building Back

In the 26 years since California voters launched their state’s monolingual era — and eight years since they ended it — it’s clear that the ground of public opinion has shifted. Polling before the 2016 Proposition 58 referendum found that .

found that 65% of Latino families “would enroll their children in a bilingual program if it were available.” In a separate 2023 poll of mostly Spanish-dominant Californians, 59% of respondents listed “access to bilingual programs” as an “essential” or “high” priority for their families. 

Bilingual strongholds like CVLCC and Camino Nuevo are essential resources for helping make that hope realistic for more of those families. “I’m second-generation Chicana,” says Sherman principal Enriquez. “And this generation of parents says things like, ‘I never got this opportunity as a kid. I wish that I could speak more Spanish. I want my kids to be able to be bilingual, to get the opportunity that I never had.’ And I’m that parent too! I brought my kids here, through Sherman, so they could be bilingual.”

Teachers say Struggly, available for at-home or classroom use, is a game changer for K-8 students discouraged by math or having a hard time with traditional tasks because of language barriers or learning disabilities. In game-like tasks aligned with common core standards, students manipulate shapes, animals, and algebraic formulas to build foundational understanding. 

The platform’s potential reach is hard to overstate as educators urgently search for ways to address the : On average, only one in four kids are proficient in 8th grade math; the number hovering between 9-14% for Black, Native and Latino children.

In approximately 340 schools across 28 states and 21 countries, Struggly has become the go-to supplemental learning platform for some educators whose students had difficulty socializing or collaborating after missing in-person learning in early childhood during the pandemic. School sites range from gifted programs and large to smaller private schools serving students with special needs and juvenile detention centers. 

, “put the student in the driver’s seat, don’t make them reliant on any sort of literacy, but also don’t make them rely on an adult to tell them what to do,” said Tanya LaMar, CEO and cofounder, adding its unusual design was intended to “allow all students to have access to math regardless of language, socioeconomic status or any kind of diversity markers.” 

Many educators have found the platform via conferences across the U.S. At SXSW EDU, the platform won this year’s Community Choice Award for the , celebrating digital innovations helping to bridge learning gaps. 

Levels designed to become more challenging as students go on can be solved multiple ways, encouraging learners to talk to each other about their strategies and challenge common misconceptions that math is more about memorization than reason or logic. The video game-like design, with no time restrictions, also keeps students calm and engaged longer, teachers say. 

After using Struggly for one month – 20 minutes, three times a week – 63% improved scores on state tests and 68% felt more engaged in their math classes, according to independent research from WestEd. Teachers have also noticed fewer outbursts and negative self talk, more confidence and less .

One district survey revealed students were more likely to agree with statements like, “if I work really hard, I can become very good at math” and to disagree with “people can’t change how good they are at math.”

Struggly was originally imagined by designer Alina Schlaier, whose daughter came home from first grade one day saying, “I hate math.” Schlaier found Stanford math expert Jo Boaler’s resources online, but knowing that it wasn’t sustainable for her to prep each lesson for her daughter, the designer reached out to Boaler with the idea of forming a company that would blend their skills. 

Boaler’s former PhD student Tanya LaMar joined the effort, bringing an educator’s lens to its creation, once a Los Angeles Unified teacher. There, she had faced compounding challenges: teaching math while teaching kids to see math beyond the narrow way they’d been taught it must look – facts, procedures to be memorized.

“Meanwhile, neuroscience research tells us that there’s no such thing as math brain … I felt like I was up against a lot trying to convince my students they could be math people, when struggling in math is seen as a sign that something’s wrong,” LaMar said. “So Struggly is about supporting students to embrace struggle as an integral part of the learning process.”

Such a shift has been transformational for educators like Gregg Bonti, a math group teacher at Mary McDowell, a quaker school in Brooklyn serving students with language-based learning disabilities.

Typically, his 4th and 5th graders arrive with some “resistance to learning and school.” At the start of the year, as soon as something felt challenging, many would shut down or push back on tasks, or start to talk to themselves disparagingly. Many also struggle with impulse control, but the games’ design has helped them “slow down” and “strategize.”

“It’s really rare and challenging for us to find websites that meet students where they’re at with their language skills,” Bonti said. Removing language from the tasks and letting them dive in has “neutralized” the playing field for his students, who come to class with a range of reading abilities. 

Since introducing Struggly in December, he’s finding students are more eager to persevere in math tasks and ask each other questions like “what if we tried this?” It’s also helped their teachers distinguish between their conceptual misunderstandings of math versus difficulties with language. 

Across the country in California’s central valley, one rural educator has been finding similar impacts. 

At Semitropic, a small school of predominantly Latino, multilingual students living in poverty, 3rd grade teacher Jennifer Fields was looking for platforms that would encourage and engage – they felt burnt out by Prodigy, but she needed something standards based. 

The first day she introduced it, one student went home and played on their own for three hours. It’s become so desired she can use it as a motivation for them to finish their other in-class work. 

Conceptually, it’s helped them grasp onto geometry concepts like manipulation and transformation easier than in traditional workbooks. They’re learning how to better communicate math concepts verbally, something she worried about seeing the difference in this group of children who had the equivalent of Zoom kindergarten. 

“That in itself has been my biggest success for the year is the fact that now they will work in cooperative groups with each other … they’re being more verbal and realizing it’s OK to talk about, ‘oh man, I didn’t get it.’ They go find that person and they immediately go to try to help them out instead of just having them just sit there, freak out, suffer and get mad,” she said.  

And because the platform is so visually and sonically engaging, teachers are finding it’s helping students learn independence and staying on-task. That has enabled Shelly Anderson, a 4th grade teacher in Salt Lake City, to be able to conduct small groups with students who need more specialized support; the others are able to work on Struggly independently, helping each other, as she provides more individualized attention. 

One student, who had a tendency to swear and give up, sometimes leaving the classroom, is now self-regulating his anger and frustration better. He no longer says he “can’t do this” or that “I’m dumb at math,” even during usual instruction.

“It’s just refreshing to have something for the kids to do where they can untether from the teacher more,” Anderson said. “They can start to get some of their own confidence and build their identity as math learners rather than just thinking, ‘well, either I have a math brain or I don’t.’ Everybody has the ability to seek out patterns, look at problems and look at logic.”

Disclosure: The Walton Family Foundation sponsored SXSW EDU’s Launch Startup competition and provides support to The 74. 

But when she saw that her K-8 school district in rural Appalachia was quietly becoming a refuge for families from Mexico, Central America and Asia, she shifted gears and became an English as a second language teacher, pushing to smooth her students’ — and their families’ — transition to life in the U.S.

Her students’ English acquisition is key because many become their family’s translators, not just in school but elsewhere. “So their exposure to the language and their learning the language actually opens up doors and possibilities for their families,” she said in an interview.

Testerman on Wednesday was named the by the Council of Chief State School Officers.

As Teacher of the Year, she’ll spend a year traveling the U.S. as an ambassador to the teaching profession, telling The74 that she’ll urge other teachers to become advocates for their students — and for their fellow educators.

Testerman was selected from a field of three other finalists for the award: Alaska’s Catherine Walker, a high school science and career and technical education teacher; Georgia’s Christy Todd, a middle school music technology teacher; and New Jersey’s Joe Nappi, a high school history teacher who writes a blog on teaching about the Holocaust.   

All of the finalists, as well as the other state-level teachers of the year, on Wednesday learned from First Lady Jill Biden that when they visit the White House later this year, as is customary, they’ll also be the guests of honor at a , the first time that diplomatic nicety will be reserved for a group of educators, the Associated Press reported. Typically state dinners are used to woo foreign heads of state. 

Testerman, who earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and a Master of Arts in reading education from East Tennessee State University, teaches in , a K-8 school in a small farming town of about 4,500, located 250 miles east of Nashville. And she serves as the Rogersville district’s ESL specialist and ESL program director. She also coordinates the system’s summer programs and is a mentor teacher and member of the teacher leadership team.

She’s not the first ESL teacher to capture the top-teacher honor — in 2004, it went to Rhode Island’s , who designed the ESL program for the North Kingstown, R.I., school district. And in 2018, the recipient was , a Washington state ELA teacher who worked at a “newcomer school” for new immigrants. Other recipients have also worked with English language learners, even if the designation wasn’t in their formal title.

Here are five things to know about Testerman:

1. She has taught her entire career in a single school in rural east Tennessee.

The 53-year-old Testerman is a lifelong teacher, having put in 33 years in the classroom, all of it Rogersville. 

“It’s a beautiful place,” she said in an interview. “It looks like it’s a Hallmark postcard.”

She admits that her long career is “kind of unusual — teachers, as you know, tend to leave the field as soon as they’re able to do so. But I still find a lot of joy in teaching, and I feel like I’m as energized to keep teaching as I was years ago.”

2. Before working in ESL, she had a long career as a classroom teacher. 

Testerman spent most of her career, about 30 years, working as a first- and second-grade teacher before enrolling in Tennessee’s program and adding an English as a second language (ESL) endorsement to her resume. She has said she wanted to ensure that immigrant students and families in Rogersville had an advocate. 

“I try to make sure that my children and their families are assimilated here, that they’re participating in sports and everything, because if they assimilate, people will accept them more easily,” Testerman told when she was named a finalist.

3. While Rogersville is isolated and rural, her students are from all over the world.

Testerman has a full-time case load of 21 students, a mix of Spanish, Arabic and Chinese speakers, as well as a few who speak Gujarati, a language from the western Indian state of Gujarat. It accounts for a of Indian immigrants to the U.S. 

“It’s a pretty interesting breakup of situations and languages,” she said. 

Her students are divided between first-generation Americans born here to immigrant parents, and newcomers — many of whom have arrived in the U.S. “within the past year or so,” she said.

Testerman said her students occasionally face “some unpleasant situations” around discrimination in the mostly white community of Rogersville, “but that’s basically the rarity. My school has embraced them, has embraced their families. I think that I have the luxury of being in the role to kind of be the ambassador, to make that happen.”

She said most people in the area also embrace the newcomer families once they get to know them “because they see that they’re just like every other family. They love their students. They want them to do well and achieve so that they can create a good future for themselves.”

In her application for the award, Testerman wrote, “Simple gestures such as sitting with my students’ families at high school graduation or a school play goes a long way in helping them find acceptance in our rural area, since I have belonged to this community for decades and others trust my lead.”

Former student Nadeen Aglan told AP that Testerman goes out of her way to develop close ties with the families of her students. “Her kindness shows. Her compassion is really deep.”

4. She wants teachers to realize their own power — and fight for change.

Testerman said she is looking forward to advocating for teachers over the next year.

“There are 3.5 million dedicated teachers all over this country who invest time, energy and love into helping our students create the best possible future for themselves,” she said. “And I want to empower teachers by getting them to understand that they are their best advocates and their students’ best advocates. Teachers are the experts.”

Testerman said many times teachers must abide by policies that are “not made by people who spend a lot of time in classrooms. “It’s time for teachers to let their voices be heard.”

She wants teachers to advocate for students not just in their school building but, if needed, in their state legislature “when there is either an implemented policy or a suggested policy that you know is just not what’s best for kids.”  

5. She plans to return to the classroom after her year away.

National Teacher of the Year winners often leverage the honor to pursue big dreams outside of the classroom, including and . , the 2016 honoree, is now a member of Congress representing Connecticut. 

Testerman on Wednesday said her plan after her year away from the classroom is to return. “I still find so much joy in teaching,” she said. “I can’t honestly imagine my life without being a teacher.” That may change, she said, but at the moment she plans to return to the classroom.

Watching a child acquire another language is “an amazing, magical transformation,” Testerman . “There’s a level of excitement in a learner when they realize they are able to understand the language they are hearing around them.” 

Picture this: kindergarten students are excitedly discussing the life cycle of a tree. In a whole-class discussion, paired “turn and talk” chats with a partner, and responses to sentence stems, they describe bare limbs, falling leaves, and a tree’s dormant winter season. They compare evergreens and deciduous trees, using vocabulary that reappears in related texts. In this joyful learning community, students at all reading levels practice grade-level oral and literacy skills, grow vocabulary, and gain access to a common base of information.

This is what reading lessons look like today in the Roswell Independent School District, where I oversee elementary education. It’s a major difference from the not-so-distant past.

In Roswell, more than 75% of students are Hispanic and about one-third are English language learners. More than one-third are from low-income households. For many of our students, kindergarten is their first classroom experience. They haven’t yet mastered the oral-language skills needed for learning, like answering and asking questions in complete sentences, turn-taking, and following directions. Because these skills form the foundation for academic learning, building oral language and vocabulary are urgent priorities.

Five years ago, teachers would group students and assign texts by skill level and rotate between groups to offer targeted supports. While this approach was familiar to many of our educators, we also recognized that it wasn’t accelerating learning for the students who needed it most. Learning is a social activity, and students thrive when they can participate fully with their classmates. By keeping students separated, we were perpetuating differences in their levels of preparedness for school.

Today, our teachers are using a new, knowledge-based high-quality reading curriculum and students of all language levels work together with texts on a common topic. Students’ interaction with these texts can vary — some read independently, some in pairs, some in small groups, and some listen as the text is read to them. But they are working with the same vocabulary and building the same knowledge. In these classrooms, it’s hard to spot students who are working to catch up with their peers, because the entire class is working together on the same grade-level content. 

This transition didn’t happen overnight. There were three major moves that have helped us to adopt and implement a high-quality, knowledge-based reading curriculum.

Go Grassroots—But Be Ready to Leverage Leadership

Before we entertained switching curriculum, we invested in building knowledge and expertise about the science of reading in our district. Along with two-dozen colleagues, I participated in the LETRS professional learning program to learn about structured literacy. Some of those educators had been working to nudge our instruction toward evidence-based practices, but there was little momentum to do so across the board.

When our leadership changed and New Mexico passed a new literacy law, there was an opportunity to reassess current practices. Because we had already built a deep understanding of the science of reading, we were able to make the case for a new curriculum and include a variety of perspectives in choosing the right program for our students. 

Administrators, reading coaches, and teachers worked together to ensure the curriculum we chose, Amplify CKLA, is truly aligned to the science of reading. Better yet, we could base on decision on our earlier studies, not a sticker or marketing slogan.

Begin With the Believers and Share Their Success

Changing teacher practices is hard. But changing teacher beliefs is even harder. Teachers are motivated by seeing evidence of success from trusted colleagues. And so we rolled out the new curriculum in three waves, not all at once, and were intentional in deciding which educators went first. We also established internal communications channels to share their success stories across the district.

Our first group included principals who were fully on board with the switch and teachers who were part of that grassroots science of reading movement. They were excited to shift instruction and share their experiences with colleagues. The second group included educators who were hesitant and looking for someone else to take the first step. The last group included teachers who were not eager to move away from traditional instruction.

We capitalized on the energy and expertise in our first group of curriculum switchers by sharing their experiences with educators in the second and third waves of the rollout. Our internal communications director filmed teacher testimonials, which were posted on our website. I shared these videos with our elementary principals, and they also were featured in grade-level professional learning communities.

Respond to Teacher Concerns

A knowledge-based curriculum is necessarily topic-driven. Some teachers were concerned that parents could object to certain topics. For example, a second-grade unit about early civilizations includes information about archeology and world religions. Teachers flagged that reading about various religious could be a potential point of contention for families.

We reviewed our policies and reassured teachers that they would be fully supported and had established procedures to follow if a question was raised. Teachers could share the curriculum with parents and, if a family objected, did not have to resolve the issue on their own. An administrator could help provide an alternative. We reassured them that their job is to teach the curriculum as it is written. If there’s a question or concern, a principal or administrator like me is ready to handle it. And we haven’t experienced this sort of issue to date.

All students deserve to have access to grade-level rigor, vocabulary, and content. But not every child gets to experience holiday travel, weekend museum trips, or other opportunities to build their knowledge about the world. High-quality, knowledge-based curriculum empowers students with new tools to communicate and shared knowledge to speak and write about. If we don’t provide this opportunity to all students, we are essentially shutting the door on those least prepared to thrive in school. 

Karla Stinehart is the director for elementary education at New Mexico’s Roswell Independent School District and a member of the . 

Some of these children also struggled with a language barrier — as did their parents — making the switch to remote learning even tougher, according to UnidosUS, the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization, which released the study July 11 at its conference in San Antonio. 

“This report comes at a pivotal time as our schools and communities recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, which disproportionately impacted Latino students and their families,” UnidosUS president and CEO Janet Murguía says in the foreword. “We cannot allow hard won educational gains to be reversed, yet we also know that the pre-pandemic status quo was not working as well as it should.” 

Latinos make up a formidable percentage of the K-12 population, growing from 9% in 1984 to 28% today. Some 94% of those under 18 are U.S.-born citizens and nearly three quarters are of Mexican descent. Despite stringent and sometimes hostile U.S. immigration policies, their numbers are increasing: Latinos are expected to hit 30% of the K-12 population by 2030. 

First Lady Jill Biden, who spoke at the conference Monday, said the White House stands in support of the Latino community. She touched upon the gun safety laws brought about by the tragic shootings in nearby Uvalde, the diversity of the Latino population as a whole and the goals that unite this group. 

“Yes, the Latino community is unique,” she said. “But what I’ve heard from you again and again is that you want what all families want. Good schools. Good jobs. Safe neighborhoods. You want justice and equality—the opportunity to build a better life for your families. It’s not only what all families want; it’s what all families deserve.”

Latino students have made substantial gains in recent decades on the education front, UnidosUS notes. Their on-time high school graduation rate increased from 71% in the 2010-11 school year to nearly 82% in 2018-19, an all-time high. Likewise, the number of Hispanic students enrolled in postsecondary programs jumped from 782,400 in 1990 to nearly 3.8 million in 2019, a 384% increase.

But both of these figures took a hit in recent years: The on-time Latino high school graduation rate dropped by .7% from 2020 to 2021, according to a data analysis from 25 states representing 57% of the student population. Even more troubling, Latino freshman enrollment in college shrunk by 7.8% in spring 2021 compared to the year before, marking the first such decline in a decade: The figure rebounded by 4% by the spring 2022 semester, UnidosUS found, but it remained below pre-pandemic levels. 

The trend is in keeping with that of the overall college population, which is down by more than 1.4 million undergraduates.

Not all academic indicators are available and many poor students were not tested during the height of COVID, but at least one critical test shows a lag: Latino students in 3rd through 8th grade saw greater declines than their non-Latino white peers on NWEA’s Measures of Academic Progress, an interim assessment administered in schools across the country.

But, UnidosUS writes in its report, the loss needs to be put in context. Latino students were more likely to attend high-poverty schools that participated in remote instruction for a longer period of time, often yielding a greater rate of learning loss for students, the organization found.

UnidosUS recommends improved data collection and analysis meant to identify academic weaknesses and improve results. It implores districts to honor student’s rights to their education — some schools have been sued for failing to enroll immigrant students whom they feel will not graduate on time — and include the voices of students and their families in shaping education policies and services. 

It also calls for a major increase in funding, a “bold and historical investment in Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act,” the federal formula grant program intended to support English learners by increasing funding from $831 million to $2 billion. 

“Since 2001, the population of English learners has increased by 35%,” the report notes. “However, Title III funding has not kept pace. When adjusted for inflation, funding has decreased by 24% since 2002.”

The group found Latino students are more likely than their peers to attend a low-rated school and to have a novice teacher. These children also have limited exposure to educators who look like them — just 9% of teachers are Latino — which is an important factor in student success. 

And language access remains a challenge: More than three quarters of the nation’s 5.1 million English language learners are Latino and a similar percentage speak Spanish at home.

Research shows students learning English typically make academic gains at rates similar to or higher than their peers, the study notes, but experience greater learning loss in the summer months when they are not in the classroom. The pandemic, which sent the nation’s entire school population home for months at a time, worsened this slide for Latino children, who were disconnected from their teachers and the technology their schools offered. Just two years prior to the pandemic, data shows nearly a third of Latino households lacked high-speed broadband internet and 17% did not have a computer in the home.

Despite many schools’ efforts to place a device in the hands of every child, Latinos remain at a disadvantage. Two years into the pandemic, 1 in 3 often or sometimes faced one of the following problems: They had to complete their homework on a cell phone, were unable to turn in their assignments because they lacked computer or internet access, or were forced to use public Wi-Fi to complete at-home work, UnidosUS reported.

And their lack of connectivity wasn’t the only problem, the group found: 50% of Latino parents reported having difficulty helping their kids with unfamiliar coursework and 58% had problems communicating with teachers, possibly because of a language barrier and schools’ failure to employ translators.  

Today Sayavong is the principal of Milwaukee Academy of Chinese Language (MACL), a Milwaukee Public School (MPS) just a half mile west of Marquette University. MACL is also home to the International Newcomer Center (INC), often the first stop for refugee children who arrive in Milwaukee. His school is preparing for the first wave of Afghan children who will soon be coming to town from Fort McCoy. 

Thousands of Afghans who were airlifted to the United States are now housed at the military base in west central Wisconsin. MPS officials say that federal officials have told them that approximately 500 of them will ultimately make Wisconsin their home, but the last count given was 399. We do not know exactly how many school-aged children will be in that settlement group. 

MPS officials believe that the majority of those Afghans settling in Wisconsin will find their way to the state’s major cities for several reasons. 

First, larger cities like Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay have the necessary infrastructure to help refugee children transition socially and educationally. City school systems have gone through this process before, most recently with children coming from Somalia and the Rohingya from Myanmar (Burma). 

Second, refugees from the same countries tend to cluster together. Along the interstate highway between Minneapolis and Milwaukee, in every large community there are Hmong families. 

Finally, many Afghans here are from larger urban centers. The capital city, Kabul, has a population of over 4.5 million, so larger cities might feel more like home. 

MPS is preparing for an unknown number of children to arrive. 

Retired Green Bay school board member Mike Blecha recalls the language challenges faced by Somali parents and students when they first entered his school district. No one in the district spoke Somali; no Somali parents spoke English. Finally, the school system found one Somali high school student who spoke French—a language widely spoken in Somalia, where France was a colonial power. That student became the translator.

Kourosh Hassani is the ESL Teacher Leader for MPS and speaks Persian Farsi. About 78% of Afghans speak Dari Farsi, so Hassani and others who came from Iran should be able to speak to Afghans in their native language. In addition, many of the Afghans coming here worked as translators to U.S. military and government officials and are fluent in English. While Somalians and Rohingya came to the U.S. not knowing anyone, many Afghans have contacts with U.S. soldiers they worked with, often fought with, side by side.

Erin Sivek is an English and English as a second language (ESL) teacher at the INC. For three years, she was an ESL teacher at South Division High School, first teaching mostly Spanish-speaking students. But soon her program was overwhelmed with students coming from other countries in Africa and Asia. She was asked to come to the INC by MPS officials because she seemed to have the ability to bridge gaps with students coming from these foreign lands.

She says she wasn’t sure that she could make the transition from high school to middle school, but now believes it was the right move looking back at the ten years she has been with INC.

MACL is a K-8 school, and refugee K-3 students are mainstreamed into regular classes with additional support from ESL teachers, a psychologist and social worker. The thought here is that, even if refugee children have received little or no formal education before coming to Milwaukee, the younger students are still only a couple of grade levels behind. They can catch up.

But for middle school students, the educational gap may be significant. Sayavong says that they have had students who didn’t know how to hold a pencil.

Sivek says there is a lot to learn even for students who can read and write in another language. Afghan written language is similar to Arabic script, moving from right to left and using a different alphabet.

Some students at INC come from countries with few computers and not much internet access. The entire MPS system is web-based, and students have to learn how to navigate on Chromebooks to accomplish their educational tasks.

Some students come from educational systems heavily dependent upon memorization and rote learning. Sivek says these students sometimes struggle to make the transition to instruction that centers critical thinking. Not all of these differences apply to students coming from other countries. Students from Zambia and Malawi, for example, have been educated much like students in the U.S.

There are also cultural and religious gaps to navigate.

During recess, a student asked Sivek why she didn’t wear a hijab because “You’re Muslim.”

She answered that she is not Muslim. 

“What’s your religion?” 

“I’m Christian.” 

Other girls responded “But we hate you, no wait, no we don’t.” The girls had to rethink their attitude.

Several years ago, she remembers talking to a male middle-school student: “We don’t have to listen to you,” he told her. “Men are in charge.” 

Her response was, “Let’s talk about this, if we can.”

Although Afghan children are coming from an ethnically segregated country, most of those coming to America have been exposed to a Western lifestyle, attending classes with both genders and seeing women holding positions of authority at all levels of business and government. Girls and women may wear head coverings but not the burqas that cover women’s bodies from head to toes.

Says Hassani, “They don’t want to be under the burqa.”

Some of Sivek’s fondest memories are of the students who return to visit her. “Even those who were with behavioral issues or who did not feel this was the place for them, we have students come back every year, whether they are visiting from high school or college; they often come back together: ethnic, religious, cultural groups… that is one of the greatest things.”

Many students have traumatic memories of the difficult experiences they had when they were fleeing their home countries, and of living in refugee camps. 

Sayavong remembers that Rohingya refugees could not come to the United States right away because of COVID. In one family, the mother was diagnosed with cancer while the family was in a refugee camp in Malaysia. She died two weeks after her family arrived in Milwaukee. The young father, who had a four-year-old and a second grader, was trying to make a new life in a foreign country without a mother. The four-year-old cried every day in school. It took some time before he could function normally.

For students who experience trauma, the reaction may be one of resignation, says Sivek. She remembers one student who would write about missing home. For a while he stopped participating. Then he stopped coming to school altogether. It took some time to get him back on track. But he is now in college.

The emotional toll on the Afghan children who are arriving in Wisconsin now is still unknown. The experience of being uprooted and whisked thousands of miles away to an unknown land is sure to have an emotional impact.

This year INC will have a dedicated psychologist, a social worker and a parent coordinator who once was a student at INC after fleeing her home country in Africa.

Because many of the Afghans coming to the United States speak English, and some may have college credits or advanced degrees, MPS is looking at the possibility of hiring Afghans as classroom paraprofessionals, and ultimately transitioning them into ESL or classroom teachers. 

Many MACL middle school students go on to high school at Milwaukee High School of the Arts, just a half mile away. MHSA music teachers come to MACL for instrumental music. “Students might not be able to speak English yet but they can play the music,” says Sayavong. Their participation in the instrumental program becomes their audition for MHSA. In turn, the high school has added additional ESL teachers for their support.

But high school students who come directly to MPS without going through the INC program should have a full transition program as they have at MACL, says Sivek. Today, many high school refugee students are at South Division with extensive ESL support, but Sivek believes it is not enough. A more developed transition program was on the drawing boards several years ago but was never implemented. She hopes that the superintendent and the board take another look at creating a high school welcome center.

Sivek reflects on these experiences: “We are so fortunate that we do have students from all these different religions and language groups and countries. … And once they are integrated into the program, learning together, they see all these things they have in common.”

Concludes Sivek, “We are really going to have a great year.”

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More than 56 percent of respondents said these students’ formal education was significantly disrupted, but they were not the only children to have suffered: Most did not believe they were disproportionately affected as compared to their English-speaking peers, despite evidence to the .

The answers were gleaned from a survey conducted in October by Off2Class, a company that provides curriculum, assessments and professional development tools to ESL teachers. The seven-year-old for-profit is headquartered in Canada but serves more than 90,000 students in 120 countries.

Nearly three-quarters of survey respondents were teachers: The others were tutors. Roughly half live in the United States though many are Americans living and working in other countries. 

Several of the questions were answered on a sliding scale though teachers were able to write their responses to open-ended queries. The results reveal their concerns about the long-term consequences of lower expectations for English language learners — and about their backsliding, especially in the area of grammar.

Some respondents were concerned about students’ mental health and the return of behavioral problems usually seen in elementary school — getting out of their seat at inappropriate times and name-calling — while others wondered whether students’ enthusiasm for school would return.

“Most of them just logged in on Zoom, left the computer and pretended not to care,” one educator wrote. “My main concern is that it has made them less interested in studying/engaging in future classes.”

Still others focused on the difficulty of learning a new language without close interaction with school staff.

“I think ESL learning is extremely difficult over the internet when it comes to pronunciation,” another educator said. “Students benefit from being able to mimic mouth movement and that can get lost on video chat.”

More than 44 percent of survey-takers said their schools supplied them with sufficient technology to weather the shutdowns. But more than a quarter disagreed.

It’s not surprising, then, that more than 62 percent of respondents paid out of pocket for some of the tools they needed to serve their students during the pandemic: They spent hundreds — or, in some cases, even thousands of dollars — on additional materials, including books, computers, routers, printers, webcams, headsets and memberships to online educational resources.

But no matter what they purchased, problems persisted. Motivation was a significant hurdle for students learning at home. Not only did they face a massive disruption in their lives because of school closures, but they also wrestled with a faltering economy and in many cases, lost wages for themselves or their families.

Educators said they, too, felt the strain: While many respondents reported an even greater passion for their work — one said the pandemic, “has only increased my desire to improve myself so I can be of further use to my students” — some were clearly overburdened.

Not all teachers received the help they needed from their schools. While more than 48 percent said they were supported by their employers during the crisis, nearly 20 percent strongly disagreed with the statement. More than 58 percent of respondents said their stress levels rose sharply during the crisis.

“The way we are treated, the amount of work versus pay, the disrespect and disregard of teacher’s mental health,” one teacher began, “I feel like quitting for good every single day.”

Despite the burnout, there were bright spots: Nearly half the respondents — 46 percent — said their confidence in online teaching skyrocketed during the pandemic. Kris Jagasia, CEO and co-founder of Off2Class, was glad to see teachers build their skills in this area.

“Looking forward, now that ed tech is here to stay, it’s really important that technology be considered very purposefully to make sure the right investments are being made for ELLs,” he said. 

Some respondents were reached through a Facebook group founded by Off2Class while others were contacted by email through the company’s customer database. Most use its software and were incentivized to participate through T-shirt giveaways and/or a $25 credit toward the purchase of the company’s goods.

The 74 contributed several questions to the survey, including those on student retention.

The results, collected between Oct. 22-29, were telling: While some educators might have wished for English language learners to have repeated a grade, only 22 percent recommended this for their own students.

Tim Boals is the founder and director of , an organization that provides language development standards, assessments, and resources to those who support multilingual learners. Based out of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, WIDA has 41 member states and territories which use their language standards and follow their guidelines for teaching these children. 

Boals is well aware of the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on traditionally underserved populations, including multilingual learners, but does not believe retention is the answer: He said schools should remember language acquisition takes time.

The real problem, he said, is some educators’ lack of faith in these children: If teachers label them unsuccessful, the children themselves will believe they are destined to fail.

“If we see kids as ‘behind their peers,’ the danger is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that denies them the future opportunities they need,” he said. “There are plenty of anecdotal examples of people going through most of their school careers at the bottom and then something happens that shows them their potential greatness and they turn it around.”

Success depends on a schoolwide buy-in, with every adult on campus working to create a welcoming and engaging environment for newcomer children and committing themselves to helping them learn English while they master content subjects. All this, Boals said, while respecting and building upon their students’ own languages and cultures.

“It’s a big job, but there are plenty of examples of schools that are succeeding,” he said. “We need to share those examples and ensure that educators have the resources and understanding to create and sustain those learning spaces for multilingual learners.”