We want students to master academic standards, and we want them to be confident, adaptive, and socially responsible. Above all, we want them to find meaning and satisfaction in their lives. Achieving these goals requires a concerted focus on the social-emotional skills that empower students in and beyond the classroom. In Teaching to Empower, Debbie Zacarian and Michael Silverstone explore what an empowered student looks like in our increasingly diverse contemporary schools and prompt educators to examine their own relationship to empowerment. The book's evidence-based strategies and authentic examples show you how to foster an inclusive culture of agency, self-confidence, and collaboration that will give each of your students-regardless of race, culture, language, socioeconomic status, abilities, sexuality, or gender-the opportunity, responsibility, and tools to become an active learner, thoughtful community member, and engaged global citizen. Whether you're a preservice teacher, a classroom novice, or a veteran, you'll find the practical guidance you'll need to: Create inclusive and empowering physical learning spaces. Set up self-directed learning and promote positive interdependence. Promote student self-reflection. Teach the skills of collaboration. Foster the self-advocacy that fuels deeper, more autonomous learning. Partner more effectively with families and the community to support student empowerment.

English language learners (ELLs) often face the difficult challenge of learning both a new language and new subject matter at the same time. In Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas, Judie Haynes and Debbie Zacarian offer strategies, tools, and tips that teachers can use to help ELLs at all levels flourish in mainstream classrooms. This book will show teachers how to: Determine their ELLs' stages of English language acquisition. Modify assignments and assessments in different content areas for ELLs at different stages of language development. Ensure that all ELLs participate fully in lesson activities alongside their English-fluent peers. Communicate effectively with parents and guardians of students from diverse cultures. Real-life examples of lessons from elementary, middle, and high school that have been modified for ELLs in language arts, math, science, and social studies classes show how to effectively put the authors' recommendations into practice. A glossary of important ELL and ESL terms is included as well, for those who are new to teaching ELLs. Whether novice or veteran, all teachers of ELLs will benefit from this wonderfully practical guide to ensuring that ELLs learn English by learning content-and learn content while learning English.

Essential principles, practices, and structures for multilingual learners Much has changed in the ten years since this book was first published. A celebrated triumph, it provided state, district, school, and teacher leaders with a comprehensive guide to support multilingual learners to reach their full potential. From selecting the appropriate program model to partnering with families and infusing federal and state laws governing the education of multilingual learners and the rights of their families into all we do, the key messages that made the first edition of this book a renowned success have been re-examined in the second edition with a robust lens to meet these demanding times. This second edition supports educators to design and enact policies, practices, and structures for multilingual learners (MLs) to feel a sense of safety, belonging, value, and competence. Topics explored in the book include: a discussion of the changes to federal and state policies and their impact on MLs and their families strategies to move from a deficit- to an asset-based approach that values multilingualism nine principles to design and deliver high-quality lessons in multiple languages and across disciplines practices to identify and support MLs with learning differences and disabilitiessteps for building long-lasting family-school partnerships Reflecting changing trends in leadership, this new edition supports superintendents, principals, curriculum supervisors, coaches, mentors, teachers, and other stakeholders in their collaborative efforts to create and sustain successful language assistance programs.

It was a dark and stormy night in Santa Barbara. January 19, 2017. The next day's inauguration drumroll played on the evening news. Huddled around a table were nine Corwin authors and their publisher, who together have devoted their careers to equity in education. They couldn't change the weather, they couldn't heal a fractured country, but they did have the power to put their collective wisdom about EL education upon the page to ensure our multilingual learners reach their highest potential. Proudly, we introduce you now to the fruit of that effort: Breaking Down the Wall: Essential Shifts for English Learners' Success. In this first-of-a-kind collaboration, teachers and leaders, whether in small towns or large urban centers, finally have both the research and the practical strategies to take those first steps toward excellence in educating our culturally and linguistically diverse children. It's a book to be celebrated because it means we can throw away the dark glasses of deficit-based approaches and see children who come to school speaking a different home language for what they really are: learners with tremendous assets. The authors' contributions are arranged in nine chapters that become nine tenets for teachers and administrators to use as calls to actions in their own efforts to realize our English learners' potential: 1. From Deficit-Based to Asset-Based 2. From Compliance to Excellence 3. From Watering Down to Challenging 4. From Isolation to Collaboration 5. From Silence to Conversation 6. From Language to Language, Literacy, and Content 7. From Assessment of Learning to Assessment for and as Learning 8. From Monolingualism to Multilingualism 9. From Nobody Cares to Everyone/Every Community Cares Read this book; the chapters speak to one another, a melodic echo of expertise, classroom vignettes, and steps to take. To shift the status quo is neither fast nor easy, but there is a clear process, and it's laid out here in Breaking Down the Wall. To distill it into a single line would go something like this: if we can assume mutual ownership, if we can connect instruction to all children's personal, social, cultural, and linguistic identities, then all students will achieve.

This book provides a comprehensive approach for building coalitions of support around student learning and engagement through interconnected classroom community-building efforts that involve teachers: building strong relationships with students; intentionally supporting students to build powerful relationships with their peers; fostering strong reciprocal relationships with families, and; building relationships with the school and community at large empowering and creating purposeful intentional spaces for students/families/school community/community at large to build powerful relationships with each other.

A legacy of the No Child Left Behind legislation of 2001 is that the significant achievement gaps between language minority students (ELLs and other speakers of non-Standard English) were made painfully visible to educators and the general public. Unfortunately, disaggregating data or 'exposing the cracks beneath the wallpaper' (Johnson/Avelar La Salle, 2010) alone is an insufficient remedy. Addressing these gaps remains a salient theme of our nation's school reform agenda and will be for years to come. Over the years, Corwin has published a number of works that aim to help close achievement gaps between ELs and non-ELs as well as children of color and their White counterparts. Some of these titles are aimed at school leaders and suggest that a 'top down' approach emphasizing culture shifts and policy changes are the most effective starting points. (see, e.g., Lindsey et al., Cultural Proficiency: A Manual for School Leaders, Singleton, Courageous Conversations about Race, and the upcoming Walking the Equity Walk by John Browne. Other titles start with changing practices at the classroom level, e.g., Bonnie Davis' How to Teach Students Who Don't Look Like You. The proposed title which falls into this second category highlights the importance of mastering Academic Language as a key to school success and closing achievement. It is grounded in an originalafour-pronged framework that describes how academic language learning is a (1) sociocultural, (2) literacy learning, (3) academic, and (4) a cognitive (higher order thinking skill) process.a Written in a teacher-friendly voice, the book emphasizes what can be done to strategically plan and deliver high quality learning, school and parent engagement environments using this four pronged framework. It is also well-suited to the work of teacher teams and includes a number of reflective prompts and professional development activities.

Rapidly changing and diverse student populations necessitate culturally responsive schooling. It can be a challenging balancing act for educators to respect diversity and teach to each student's needs while adhering to restrictive curricula that mandate the use of standard English. Responsive Schooling for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students offers a balanced approach to developing students' academic language proficiency while simultaneously honouring, acknowledging and valuing the richness of their home and community languages and cultures. Debbie Zacarian and Ivannia Soto provide a practical framework within which schools and educators can make students' personal, cultural and social identities central to the curriculum by drawing on the experiences and interests they bring to the classroom. Filled with examples of responsive teaching and opportunities to reflect on current practice, the book is a rich resource for teachers and school leaders alike.