Support Multilingual Learners
Develop and Deepen Strategies for Culturally Responsive Teaching for Multilingual Learners
Multilingual learners (MLLs) enrich schools and districts with a diverse range of strengths and identities. As classroom communities benefit from the perspectives and insights these students bring, they must also affirm, welcome, and respond to the children’s diverse needs and thoughtfully help them succeed.
Get coaching and proven frameworks from the Partners in School Innovation team to support your strategic development of culturally responsive teaching for multilingual learners. Together, we’ll work on building foundational knowledge, skills, and systems for K-12 leaders and educators who have a shared responsibility to ensure that multilingual learner students thrive.
Key Multilingual Learner Practices We Support
There is no one-size-fits-all best approach to supporting multilingual learners due to each community’s specific needs. However, our equity-focused approach complements various English language learner strategies well and in large part, aligns closely to the principles outlined in the research- and values-based California English Learner Roadmap as adopted by the California State Board of Education in July 2017.
"Partners in School Innovation is actually boots on the ground assisting the transformation of public schools. We’re talking about changing communities and the futures of children, preparing them for the 21st century."
Principal, San Francisco intermediate school, CA
Build an Assets-Oriented, Needs-Responsive Foundation in Schools for Multilingual Learners
Culturally-responsive and research-based instructional practices foster trusting classrooms, celebrate each student’s unique identity, ensure equitable access for all learners to meaningful lesson content, and develop student agency. The success of multilingual learner students depends on these practices being core to how districts and schools operate.
Our approaches to building educator capacity, enriching professional development, and strengthening K-12 leadership are rooted in assets-oriented and needs-responsive mindsets. When we partner with education leaders like you, we coach towards the adoption of these mindsets and developmentally appropriate instruction. Unlock students’ full potential by valuing the cultural and linguistic assets they bring and learning how to nurture family and community relationships.
Bridge the Gap Between Intention and Impact by Focusing on Multilingual Learner Student Experience
District curriculum and school lesson design is often planned to encourage collaboration and prioritize student success. However, the reality is that supporting multilingual learners in equitable ways is not always realized. Their success requires deliberate integration of language development in and across the curriculum and culturally responsive learning that is supported with access for comprehension, engagement, and active participation.
Develop educators and K-12 leaders who readily implement continuous improvement processes to meet their students’ diverse needs. Through practices like student shadowing and protocols to empower student voice, we help schools and districts shift focus from lesson intentions to actual student experiences and systematically ensure all children have access to high-quality, rigorous, and rich curriculum.
Nurture and Grow Effective Systemic Conditions that Support Multilingual Learner Success in Education
While change agents in education can exist at every level of the public education system, their work as individuals to support multilingual learners is ineffective without systematic change. We work with districts and school sites on initiatives to provide the scaffolding needed for multilingual learners to thrive, including adult learning and professional development of educators and K-12 leaders.
Improve instructional design and annual strategy planning through coaching focused on incorporating equitable data practices, building educator capacity and skills to be responsive to multilingual learners’ strengths and needs, and embedding community, family, and student input in programming. Commit to sustainable student success and system-wide continuous improvement with a partner by your side who uses proven research-based approaches to professional learning, team facilitation, change management, and student voice empowering.
"Without the MLL shadowing protocol, these students may have flown under the radar for more years using coping techniques."
Teacher, San Jose intermediate school, CA
Getting started with Partners in School Innovation:
-
1) Full system evaluation
After you contact us, we’ll work together to understand the strengths and needs your school or district has in supporting multilingual learners, evaluate efficacy of existing resources and programs, identify objectives, and engage stakeholders that are critical to the future success of your students.
-
2) Plan customized to your needs
Together we’ll develop a working theory of action and improvement to address unique challenges and root causes for how you serve multilingual learners, prepare to engage in future cycles of inquiry around actionable plans, and establish measures to track progress.
-
3) Implementation support
Our team of improvement partners guides deployment of the plans we’ve designed together, including developing the necessary skills and capacities of your school and district teams to manage complex change.
Let’s work together on your multilingual learner strategy.
Explore more Partners in School Innovation resources.
-
Take the “Drop Everything and Listen” course
Uncover how you as an educator can prioritize the most important voices in education—those of the students—and adjust interactions with students to lead meaningful change.
-
Access our “Empower Student Voice” resource
Use the resources in this guide to spark ideas about ways to empower student voice in your school’s or district’s context and co-design transformative initiatives with their crucial input for lasting change.
-
Access our “Checking for Understanding” resource
Discover a variety of strategies to help you frequently and effectively check for understanding of lesson objectives to better modify lesson pace and delivery to meet student needs.
-
Take the “Classroom Walkthroughs” course
Learn how to use classroom walkthroughs effectively as powerful transformation tools that improve instructional practices, foster collaboration, and drive continuous school improvement.
Districts usually face more than one challenge.
Here are more ways we support multilingual learner initiatives:
-
Strengthen K-12 leadership for lasting impact
We support educational leadership teams with driving meaningful change. Our expert coaches partner with school and district leaders to build their skills and support them with tackling challenges head-on, creating systems that support long-term success.
-
Turn your vision into actionable change
Transform the vision for your school or district into real, day-to-day progress. We’ll help you uncover the root causes of persistent challenges and co-create a clear, strategic plan that leads to sustainable improvements and lasting success.
-
Build the capacity and skills of K-12 leaders and teachers
We support educators at every level of the education system with personalized coaching, professional learning communities, and instructional development designed to give them the necessary skills to lead improvements in student success.