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FEATURED SPEAKERS: DR. SALVA | DR. CUMMINS | DR. ESCAMILLA

Dr. Carol Salva | Friday Morning Keynote Speaker

Keynote: Boosting Achievement of ALL Learners

How do we reach and support all level learners as our schools welcome more and more new arrival learners?  Newcomers and SLIFE (Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education) have a unique set of challenges as do their teachers. In this talk, we will examine the lived experiences of migrants, refugees, asylees and other recent immigrants and analyze some of the research based techniques that are supporting their success in US schools.


About Dr. Carol Salva:

Carol Salva is an award winning educator with proven success working with unschooled/under-schooled, multilingual learners classified as SLIFE (Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education) or ELD (English Language Development) students. She is a key Seidlitz Education consultant for training, coaching, modeling, and supporting program leaders. Dr. Carol Salva is a co-author of Boosting Achievement: Reaching Students with Interrupted Our Minimal Education and a co-author of DIY PD: A Guide to Self-Directed Learning for Educators of Multilingual Learners. She has taught elementary, middle and high school.
Carol holds a doctorate in education in the area of ethical leadership from the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. She also has her Masters degree in Education Administration. Along with her ESL certification, she is a Certified Gomez & Gomez Dual Language Trainer and a Certified Abydos Writing Trainer. Dr. Salva is a Kahoot Ambassador and the co-chair of the NAELPA professional learning committee.

She lives with her husband and three children in Houston, Texas.

Dr. Jim Cummins | Friday Afternoon Keynote

Satellite Keynote: Educating Multilingual Learners: Whole-School Strategies Inspired by the Instructional Innovations of Classroom Teachers

The presentation will explore what we can learn from a wide range of creative and impactful instructional innovations implemented by classroom teachers of multilingual learners over the past 30 years. These innovations share three major characteristics which, I argue, can serve as starting points for whole-school discussion of instructional priorities to promote academic achievement among multilingual learners. These priorities include (a) affirm students’ identities, (b) create an ecology of literacy engagement and socialization in the school, and (c) teach for two-way crosslinguistic transfer.

These instructional directions are rooted in the scientific research on the educational achievement of dual language and minoritized learners and apply at all levels from kindergarten through grade 12. Instruction that affirms students’ identitieschallenges historic patterns of coercive power relations in education that denied multilingual learners access to their home languages and ignored the community funds of knowledge they brought to the classroom. Instruction that creates an ecology of literacy socialization in the school and classroom maximizes students’ active engagement with reading, writing, and other forms of literate expression and is supported by massive amounts of research evidence that has been largely ignored in current debates about reading instruction. Finally, teaching for crosslinguistic transfer (pedagogical translanguaging) acknowledges the communicative, cognitive, and personal significance of students’ multilingual abilities and forms a research-based foundation for the creation of language friendly schools. The recently established language friendly schools network (languagefriendlyschools.org) illustrates how schools can implement whole-school strategies that enhance students’ and educators’ awareness of how language works and their collaborative exploration of how language impacts our lives and societies.


About Dr. Jim Cummins:

Jim Cummins is a Professor Emeritus at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. His research focuses on literacy development in educational contexts characterized by linguistic and socioeconomic diversity. In numerous articles and books, he has explored the nature of language proficiency and its relationship to literacy development, with particular emphasis on the intersections of societal power relations, teacher-student identity negotiation, and literacy attainment. His most recent book Rethinking the Education of Multilingual Learners: A Critical Analysis of Theoretical Concepts (Multilingual Matters) was published in fall 2021. He is the recipient of the International Reading Association’s 1979 Albert J. Harris award and has received honorary doctorates from five universities in North America and Europe in recognition of his contributions to issues of educational equity and multilingual education.

Dr. Kathy Escamilla | Saturday Keynote

Keynote: Boosting Understanding of Emerging Bilingual Learners: Concepts All Teachers Need to Embrace

This presentation will address the following questions/issues:

  1. How are Emerging Bilingual Learners alike and different than Monolingual English learners?
  2. What do we need to know and include in our literacy programs for Emerging Bilingual Learners whether they are in dual language/biliteracy programs or English instructed programs?
  3. What do we do to teach for social justice with our Emerging Bilingual Learners and others?


About Dr. Kathy Escamilla:

Dr. Kathy Escamilla is a Professor Emerita of Education in the Division of Equity, Bilingualism and Biliteracy at the University of Colorado, Boulder.    Dr. Escamilla’s research focuses on issues related to the development of bilingualism and biliteracy for Spanish-speaking emerging bilingual children in US schools. Her research has also examined assessment practices for emerging bilingual learners. She has authored three books and over 50 research articles on topics related to (bi)literacy for Spanish-speaking children in the U.S.  Her most recent research project titled, “Literacy Squared: Lecto-escritura al cuadrado” has been implemented in 6 states with over 5,000 students and 400 teachers.  She served two terms as the President of the National Association for Bilingual Education, and one term as the Chair of the Bilingual Special interest group at AERA. Her best professional memories however are from being a bilingual teacher in Colorado and California.  The best, best, best memories are of being a mother of 2 and an abuelita of 4.

Education

PhD Curriculum and the Study of Schooling, University of California, Los Angeles, 1987
MS Education, University of Kansas, 1975
BA Spanish, University of Colorado at Boulder, 1971