Fall Featured Speakers
Tan Huynh – Friday: Featured session, breakout and workshop
We are so fortunate to have Tan join us for three sessions on Friday! Tan Huynh (@TanKHuynh) is a secondary school teacher specializing in English language acquisition, an author, podcaster, and consultant. He has taught students from 5th to 10th grade in domestic public, private, and charter, but the bulk of his experience has been in international schools. He also taught social studies and spends much of his days co-planning and co-teaching. Tan is trained in sheltered instruction, WIDA, culturally-responsive instruction, International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program, and the Collaborative Instructional Cycle. Tan shares his application of research-based strategies on his blog, podcast, and online courses with the hopes of celebrating teachers who answer the calling to serve multilingual learners. He holds a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction specializing in language acquisition. You can learn more about his work by going to TanKHuynh.com
FRIDAY MORNING FEATURED SESSSION: CREATING THE CONDITIONS FOR LONG-TERM SUCCESS
Let’s shift beyond the limits of the long-term English learner (LTEL) label to embrace a new way of honoring secondary multilinguals’ valuable life experiences and academic potential. By focusing on experienced multilinguals’ strengths and what teachers can do, we will create the conditions for long-term success. In this keynote, Tan will share the conditions where experienced multilinguals can thrive. While the examples will be from secondary schools, these conditions are applicable to elementary school MLs as well. The goal of this keynote is to affirm what participants are already doing to serve their MLs and to offer additional approaches.
60-MINUTE SESSION: ESTABLISHING COMPREHENSIBLE INPUT
One condition for academic success is when instructions are accessible to students. When instruction, text, videos, and other forms of content delivery are inaccessible to MLs, they experience significant barriers. Fortunately, there are strategies and approaches to make instruction more comprehensible. After attending this interactive session, participants will leave with additional methods to establish comprehensible input. Though the examples will mainly be from Grades 5-12, the principles can be applicable to elementary as well.
TWO HOUR WORKSHOP: STRUCTURING ACADEMIC OUTPUT
Social and academic language are equally important. However, MLs often use social language when the task requires academic language. Therefore, it rests upon educators to explicitly teach and structure academic language output if MLs are to communicate proficiently like scientists, historians, musicians, engineers, and business people. By the end of this interactive session, participants will learn approaches so that MLs can effectively communicate in an academic register at the word, sentence, organization, and context level. While the examples come from Grades 5 – 12, these approaches can be modified for the elementary school.
Alfonso Lopez – Saturday Featured Session
We are thrilled to be learning from Alfonso Lopez on Saturday at the Fall Institute.
SATURDAY MORNING FEATURED SESSION: Querer es poder – Wanting is Power
Alfonso Lopez will be sharing some of his experiences where he will emphasize the importance of believing in ourselves. Words of ideas alone won’t take us anywhere; we must put actions into them to make them possible. Yes, we can achieve our goals and dreams when we really believe in them, and we are willing to act on them. We, the adults, must model for our students. We need to make our students believe in themselves. Yes, we can!
MORE ABOUT ALFONSO:
I was born in Oaxaca, México. I became a teacher in México and taught 5 years in the Mexican schools 1981-1986. I came to the USA and worked in the apple and pear orchards 1986-1994. I worked as a teachers’ aid while attending college to get a teaching degree 1994-1997. I worked as a teacher in Washington state 1997-2006. I worked as a school Principal in a Dual Language school 2006-2022. And I currently work as Director of the Latino/Hispanic Relations for the Wenatchee School District.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
I am the author of 4 children’s books. I lead the only one Dual Language school in Wenatchee for 14 years. I have written professional articles about bilingualism for La Cosecha, New Mexico and for “El Mundo” Spanish newspaper in the state. I have presented in different conferences for NABE, WABE, La Cosecha, National and State Migrant Conference and ESD’s. I currently host a radio program “Hablando de Educación” in Wenatchee.
AWARDS
- Washington State Sharon Christa McAuliffe Award for excellence in teaching 1998
- Regional Teacher of the Year 1999
- National Milken Family Foundation Award 1999
- State Principal of the year 2019