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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.

 

 

 

 
Foreword by Dan Alpert
 
Publisher’s Acknowledgments
 
About the Authors
 
Together . . .
 
A Note About Our Terminology
 
Chapter 1. Debbie Zacarian and Diane Staehr Fenner: From Deficit-Based to Assets-Based
 
Chapter 2. Shawn Slakk and Margarita Espino Calderón: From Compliance to Excellence
 
Chapter 3. Tonya Ward Singer and Diane Staehr Fenner: From Watering Down to Challenging
 
Chapter 4. Maria G. Dove and Andrea Honigsfeld: From Isolation to Collaboration
 
Chapter 5. Ivannia Soto and Tonya Ward Singer: From Silence to Conversation
 
Chapter 6. Margarita Espino Calderón and Shawn Slakk: From Language to Language, Literacy, and Content
 
Chapter 7. Margo Gottlieb and Andrea Honigsfeld: From Assessment of Learning to Assessment for and as Learning
 
Chapter 8. Ivannia Soto and Margo Gottlieb: From Monolingualism to Multilingualism
 
Chapter 9. Debbie Zacarian and Maria G. Dove: From Nobody Cares to Everyone/Every Community Cares
 
Index

This is exactly what I needed for a new class for general education teaching learning about teaching ELs.

Sandra Rodriguez-Arroyo
College of Education, Univ Of Nebraska At Omaha
October 31, 2020

Margarita Espino Calderon

Dr. Margarita Espino Calderón is Professor Emerita/Senior Research Scientist at Johns Hopkins University. She has worked on numerous research and development projects focusing on reading for English learners funded by the U.S.D.O.E Institute of Education Sciences, the U.S. Department of Labor, and collaborated with Harvard and the Center for Applied Linguistics on a longitudinal study funded by the NICHD. The Carnegie Corporation of New York funded her five-year empirical study to develop Expediting Comprehension for English Language Learners (ExC-ELL), a comprehensive professional development model for math, science, social... More About Author

Maria G. Dove

Maria G. Dove, Ed.D, is currently a Professor in the School of Education and Human Services at Molloy College, Rockville Centre, New York. Prior to working in higher education, she spent over thirty years as an English-as-a-second-language teacher in public schools and adult English language programs. She is well-known for her professional development work across the United States, focusing on culturally and linguistically diverse students. Dove's work has led her to publish books, articles, and chapters on collaborative teaching practices and instructional strategies for English learners. In collaboration with Andrea Honigsfeld, she has... More About Author

Diane S. Fenner

Diane Staehr Fenner, PhD, is the president of SupportEd (SupportEd.com), a woman-owned small business located in the Washington, DC, metro area that she founded in 2011. SupportEd is dedicated to empowering multilingual learners and their educators. Dr. Staehr Fenner leads her team to provide ML professional development, coaching, technical assistance, and curriculum and assessment support to school districts, states, organizations, and the U.S. Department of Education. Prior to forming SupportEd, Dr. Staehr Fenner was an English language development (ELD) teacher, dual... More About Author

Margo Gottlieb

Margo Gottlieb, Ph.D., is a staunch advocate for multilingual learners and their teachers. As co-founder and lead developer of WIDA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003, Margo has helped design and contributed to all the editions of WIDA’s English and Spanish language development standards frameworks and their derivative products. Being a bilingual teacher, facilitator, consultant, and mentor across K-20 settings, she has worked with universities, organizations, governments, states, school districts, networks, and schools in co-constructing linguistic and culturally sustainable curriculum and reconceptualizing... More About Author

Andrea Honigsfeld

Andrea Honigsfeld, EdD, is Professor in the School of Education at Molloy College, Rockville Centre, New York. Before entering the field of teacher education, she was an English-as-a-foreign-language teacher in Hungary (Grades 5–8 and adult) and an English-as-a-second-language teacher in New York City (Grades K–3 and adult). She also taught Hungarian at New York University. She was the recipient of a doctoral fellowship at St. John’s University, New York, where she conducted research on individualized instruction and learning styles. She has published extensively on working with English language learners and providing individualized... More About Author

Tonya Ward Singer

Tonya Ward Singer, M.F.A., is a professional learning leader with a deep commitment to ensuring diverse learners excel with rigorous expectations. She consults nationally helping K-12 educators realize new possibilities in language and literacy learning to close opportunity gaps for ELs and students in poverty.  Tonya has taught at multiple grade levels as a classroom teacher, reading teacher, and EL specialist, and has extensive experience helping school leaders transform learning at scale.  Her choice work is supporting educators in launching and sustaining site-based, continuous inquiry around live lessons.  She has been... More About Author

Shawn Slakk

Shawn Slakk is the CEO and Founder of ABCDSS Consulting Consortium and works with teachers, administrators, school & state agencies to offer strategies and supports for emergent bilinguals and their classmates both K-12 and adults. He is co-author and developer of new professional development sessions for all levels of educators, focusing on whole-school implementation, administrative support and coaching.  As a former Certified WIDA Trainer and Title III SIOP Coach, Shawn brings a wide understanding of a variety of strategies and how they relate to ELs, language acquisition and lesson delivery. He served as the... More About Author

Ivannia Soto Hinman

Ivannia Soto, PhD , is a professor of education and the director of graduate programs at Whittier College, where she specializes in language acquisition, systemic reform for English language learners (ELLs), and urban education. She began her career in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), where she taught English and English language development to a population of 99.9% Latinos, who either were or had been multilingual learners. Before becoming a professor, Soto also served LAUSD as a literacy coach as well as district office and county office administrator. She has presented on literacy and language topics at various... More About Author

Debbie E. Zacarian

Dr. Debbie Zacarian, founder of Zacarian & Associates, provides professional development, strategic planning, and technical assistance for K-16 educators of culturally and linguistically diverse populations. She has served as an expert consultant for school districts, universities, associations, and organizations including the Massachusetts Parent Information Resource Center and Federation for Children with Special Needs.Debbie has worked with numerous state and local education agencies and written the language assistance programming policies for many rural, suburban, and urban districts.  Debbie served on the faculty of... More About Author

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ISBN: 9781544342610
$34.95