AAAL Webinar: Intentionally Supporting Multilingual PK-12 Learners: Connecting Research to Practice

Join us for a webinar on intentional teaching practices for PreK-12 multilingual learners. This 90-minute session will feature presentations from Dr. Shakina Rajendram and Dr. Ruslana Westerlund, two scholars who are shaping this field, along with a Q&A segment. Their talks will highlight their own unique approaches to supporting PreK-12 learners and give concrete examples of successful methods and recent projects. 

Title: ‘Me Mapping’ and Digital Language Portraits to Support Multilingual Learners in K-12 Classrooms

Description: This presentation will introduce participants to ‘Me Mapping’ activities, which involve multilingual learners creating digital language portraits to represent their diverse linguistic, cultural, social and academic identities, and their perspectives on school, family, community and the world around them. Participants will hear the research on how Me Mapping supports academic and language development while fostering deeper identity engagement among multilingual learners. Additionally, practical educational resources will be provided to equip participants with the tools needed to implement Me Mapping activities in their own classrooms or teacher education programs.

Bio: Dr. Shakina Rajendram is an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Language and Literacies Education program in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching & Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. Her teaching background spans K-12 education and curriculum development, English as a Second Language (ESL) and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) instruction, and teacher education in Canada and Malaysia. Shakina’s research explores the intersection of critical multilingual pedagogies and teacher education, with a focus on supporting linguistically and racially minoritized multilingual learners in K-12 classrooms and higher education. Her current research focuses on preparing pre-service and in-service teachers to implement translanguaging and multiliteracies pedagogies in multilingual classrooms in Canada, and innovating multilingual education in under-resourced language teaching contexts in Southeast Asia.

Title: Debunking "Struggling" Writers  
 
Description: In this presentation, we will explore how SFL-informed apprenticeship pedagogy is good pedagogy for all students, not just Multilingual Learners. We will look at the work of one "struggling" writer before and after by following his journey in the context of learning how to write in science.  We will discuss contrast the pedagogy of apprenticeship with process writing, and the role of scaffolding not as static supports but as a dynamic, responsive pedagogical practice rooted in sociocultural theory of learning.  

Bio: Dr. Ruslana Westerlund has 25+ years of experience in the field of Multilingual Learner education as an ESOL teacher, teacher educator, and researcher of disciplinary literacy through Systemic Functional Linguistics. Her passion for equity for Multilingual learners has fueled her research, teacher training, and publications. As a researcher at WIDA she contributed to the development of the WIDA 2020 ELD Standards Framework and now supports school districts in using the WIDA Standards not as an end in themselves but as a resource for equitable educational opportunities where every single student identified as an English Learner is moved from the margins of educational experiences and is placed at the center of the narrative. She believes in teacher empowerment because empowered teachers empower students. She is a frequent keynote speaker at various educational conferences.