Welcome to Cultural Connections Lab. I'm your host Dr. Kelly Forbes. We are here to talk with educational professionals around the world to impact and influence the education system as we focus on cultural connections and the education of multilingual, diverse students.
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Well, hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Cultural Connections Lab with myself, your host, Dr. Kelly B. Ford.
I'm so excited to be here today. I have a wonderful co-host with me, Ms. Martha Caramale.
Let me introduce her real quickly. She is a first-generation Egyptian-American driven by a profound passion for education and technology.
Having obtained a master's degree in education and currently pursuing an MBA, she possesses a strong academic foundation to support her journey in today's corporate world.
Growing up bilingual, fluent in both Arabic and English, she experienced the enriching blend of diverse cultures and communication skills from an early age.
This multicultural background has fueled her desire to make a meaningful impact in the education space.
Beyond her career, she is profoundly motivated by the belief that education has the power to transform lives and societies.
And that is a relief. Yes. So thank you, Martha, for that.
With an unwavering commitment to the advancement of education and ed tech, she aspires to leave a lasting impact on future generations,
revolutionizing the landscape of learning and preparing the world for a brighter future.
It is truly my honor and privilege to have you with me today and with all of us. Thank you so much for being our co-host today.
Yeah, awesome. Thank you, Kelly. I'm really excited to be here.
Me too. And I also have the honor and privilege to introduce our guest today.
We have our mutual friend here, correct? We're so excited to have our friend, Louise El-Yafuri.
She is a highly accomplished educator and the owner of Diversified Consulting,
which is a prominent firm dedicating to empowering clients and their service to culturally diverse, linguistically diverse, and trauma impacted communities.
With an extensive background in education, Louise has authored numerous education related feature articles
and is excited about the release of her latest book, which is called Restoring Students' Innate Power,
Trauma Responsive Strategies for Multilingual Learners, which was just published recently in 2022.
Through her consulting from Diversified, Louise and her team offer specialized services that foster culturally responsive,
trauma informed, and linguistically affirmative learning and workspaces.
Their expertise extends to addressing the unique social academic needs of refugee and immigrant youth, making a significant impact on hundreds of learners and staff across various schools and organizations.
Diversified's comprehensive solutions include asset based consultancy, action oriented recommendations, interactive professional development workshops,
year long staff support partnerships, Title III and OCR program evaluations and compliance resolution, targeting content curation, workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion training.
Her passion for education and advocacy extends beyond her consulting work.
She is a sought after speaker and facilitator for keynotes and professional development sessions, both domestically and internationally.
Furthermore, Louise actively serves on the boards of the United Nations Association Denver and New America schools.
She has been a newcomer classroom teacher, also has been recognized with several awards, including the Rodel Exemplary Educator Distinguished Teacher Acknowledgement from Denver Public Schools,
Mile High Teacher Distinction, and Professional Fulbright Educator Recognition. If you want to get in contact with Louise, you can get her at at yellow for you, which is at E L Y A F O U R E.
She's active on Twitter and also at the website, Louise at diversified.com.
That is L O U I S E at D I V E R S I F I dash E D dot com. We will have those links for you in the description of today's podcast.
That is a big introduction, but my goodness, the reason why I have all that in there is because I am so honored and in awe just to get to be here with you and your background.
And I'm just so excited and I want everyone to know of everything that you've been involved in because what you're about to share with us today is of the utmost importance and this is coming from a valid, reliable source and an amazing person in human.
Louise, thank you for being here today. Thanks, Kelly. That was quite the introduction. It's really an honor to be here and share this space with you.
Well, I feel the exact same way. So I am excited that you all are here today. You all through your earlier conversation brought this to light for me and I receive just for our listeners.
So, you know, I sign up for almost everything possible to receive information from around the globe and especially within the United States about what's going on with our education system.
I don't know how I've missed this. I truly have no idea what has been going on, but also life is busy.
So I'm glad that you're going to be here with us today because it seems like we are about to have potentially a lot of funds cut in our federal program system that specifically helps support our diverse, emergent, multilingual students and families.
What's going on here? Martha, I know that you had kind of brought this to the forefront to me through our email exchange. Help me out. What's happening? It sounds like a code-ready emergency.
I think we're not trying to make people panic. I think that you're right. This conversation and this idea kind of came from Louise, you know, sharing some of her knowledge and what's happening in the landscape.
And for me, you know, I grew up bilingual, but not really up to date on the policies. And sometimes it's hard to understand.
And Louise just does such a good job of breaking it down. Like, this is what's happening. This is how it's going to impact things.
So this conversation started when I initially received correspondence via TESOL, letting us know of a bill that had advanced last week through the House and Senate.
It was going to the full House Appropriations Committee, and it was really looking at cutting some pretty critical educational funding.
So that looked at cuts of what I have on notes here, $14.7 billion below the fiscal year 2023.
And that would impact Title I LEA grants and look at probably $2,220,000-ish in nationwide reduction there.
And that's the B, right? Billion? Yes, billion.
And what that that's significant because Title I, of course, is kind of under that umbrella of Title III.
And that would look to eliminate most or all funding for English language learners with a cut of a projected $890 million, eliminates funding for Title II.
There's some other cuts here. One that stands out to me in particular as $35 million, a 30 percent reduction in the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.
So that is really notable when we're talking about our newcomers, our multilingual learners, our DACA students.
So those are the projected cuts that we have now. Again, we're not trying to fear monger here.
These are projected and this is what is being suggested to go through.
However, there's still time to get involved. So even in that email that I received, there is a link to be able to take action.
And so what they recommend is contacting your senator, your House of Representatives, whoever it is that is in your neck of the woods to make your voice heard.
And that's that there's still time to be able to make some change here.
The other one that stood out in here was cuts of $3.3 billion from the previous fiscal year for our unaccompanied children program.
So again, when we're talking about individuals coming in, URMs and unaccompanied refugee minors do make up a significant portion of that.
So that is certainly significant.
Awesome. And just for those that might not fully understand the scope, can you kind of share examples of how previous funding for our multilingual learners has positively affected students and educators in the past?
Sure. So that funding is absolutely critical. It's non-negotiable when we're talking about supporting our multilingual learners.
Now, the past two years have been kind of an interesting spot in that schools and districts in general have more money than we've ever had to be able to use for these programing if you have had a Ukrainian student or an Afghan student.
So if you've had either of those individuals, you have received funding, your district has received funding. We don't typically have excess amounts of funding to be used for Title III programs, but this last stretch has been an exception to the rule.
Now the pendulum is about to swing back the other way as those placements are in, those students are already in classrooms, those families are received.
And now those pools of funding will start to dry up or expire. They all expire September of 2024 if districts have not utilized those funding pools.
And then after that, it looks like we may run into some cuts.
Kelly, did you want to take the next question?
No, that's fine. I was, so just as a reminder for any of our listeners who may not know, Title I funds and Title III funds are federal dollars that are generated to help with things such as reading, professional development, parent outreach, language acquisition.
It depends on Title I or Title III, but just the general idea is that these are dollars that help our education system, it helps with tools, resources, and knowledge in ways that we can partner with our communities and our parents in moving forward in the education system.
What is so concerning to me is that from my experience in education, there's already a lack of awareness of cultural and linguistic needs for our diverse students, especially with our multilingual students, because it's both right there, right?
You have the academic side, then you have the English language acquisition side, while still maintaining and building upon your first, second, or however many language you bring to the forefront.
I'm sure that you know, Louise, that there are consulting opportunities to work with schools and districts and leaders to help with that knowledge and understanding and helping them also figure out ways to utilize these funds.
What I get concerned about is if we're already kind of in a situation of unawareness, what would that impact potentially even look like if we don't advocate for ourselves and for our students in this situation right now, whenever we don't have access to any more funds to even help spread that knowledge
and put that support in the classroom.
What are the potential impacts to this?
I think they're, they're massive.
I mean, if we think about multilingual learners being the fastest growing population of US students, then it's impossible to have these conversations without also taking Title One and Title Three into account, we can't move forward without those pieces in place.
Exactly. And then also I get so concerned about the lack of funding with the Office of Civil Rights, because I know that, I mean, that office produces so much support and guidance and letting us know that for example whenever, whenever sometimes school districts don't even
realize that they should be having their school report cards in multiple languages, as well.
And I will say there's a lot of moans and groans when it comes to OCR resolutions and that is one of the areas that I work most closely with schools and districts in.
I will say the most robust programs and states that are working actively in multilingual education have their process has usually been the outcome of one of those resolutions that they've really had to go back to the drawing table, figure out what's working, figure out what's not, figure out gaps and those
schools make some really magnificent strides because they're forced to go back in and think about it. Iowa comes to Michigan, Minnesota, both. There are a lot of states that schools in general as well Tulsa, that have had a quote unquote ding, but then because of that
they've had to go back in and reevaluate and listen to a diverse group of stakeholders and figure out what's working, what's best for their families and what's not.
Well, and then part of that goes hand in hand, and then Martha I want to get your insight too, but then I think about okay like the districts that know and are trying.
It's not that I want to believe that there are many times that people that they just didn't know like oh I didn't know or so. It's again trying to share that knowledge, and I think sometimes to us in the inner circle of in these workings for like what we
think everyone would know right but some people just literally they just unfortunately didn't know. And these fundings help support it. It is overwhelming.
There's a lot of information, especially if you're coming in new and the changes are you know this, this can, it's a continually changing environment to be navigating, it's changing in the way that we structure that is changing in our political
and socioeconomic climate, there are consistent changes that we need to stay on top of so just getting a baseline in there is hard enough without the constant evolution of what title one and title three are well and then I think about some
of the middle school districts that have one person as the assistant superintendent that has this as well as assistant superintendent and three other things, and then maybe seriously, then they drive the bus later.
Absolutely. How do you keep up with that Martha What are your thoughts about all this.
Yeah, so a few things kind of stand out to me I think the first one, especially growing up first generation. You know my parents immigrated from Egypt in the 70s.
You know barely got through high school didn't know the language here and I just remember, you know, kind of the pressure from an early age to go to school, understand what's happening in school, take that back home translated into a different
language, so that my parents are kind of up to date on what's going on and then, you know, for forget it if there's paperwork involved if there's paperwork involved that's, you know, a five or six year old kind of sitting down, trying to read it or trying
to recap to their parents like, okay, this is what my teacher said in the classroom, this is what this form is saying, this is what you're signing kind of thing and all of that to me.
And so, you know, hopefully you know, we're hopefully we're pushing towards better support there but accessibility is huge, right. So, okay, Louise gets this email she kind of shares it with me, I read through it and I'm still like, I've been in the education
space, this isn't because, you know, I'm not in the space and I just don't know but I'm like, what does this mean, like, breaking it down and making it understandable as a whole. It's a different part of accessibility that I feel like doesn't always get touched on
right it's not just is that information available but like, what does it mean.
So that's, that's really one of the biggest things I wanted to discuss with Louise.
But yeah.
I think the great point about bringing that information home and working with your parents and especially if it's paperwork. We had a two summer cohorts over the summer, obviously, and we had teams and teachers from all over the US and one of the questions
was about this around the success ability and problem solving. And one of the issues that came up with specific specifics, I can get out specifically with our Afghan parents.
And so our Afghan moms in particular were being asked to sign pieces of paper, and the realization was that the moms were not, it wasn't just that they weren't aware of what they were signing, which is not allowable as an OCR.
To begin with, but there were, there were some challenges and writing their names. And so figuring out if, if you can be just taking a step back and recognizing that under the Taliban regime that these women were not afforded the luxury of education.
And so coming here and saying, well, sign your name, and that presented a challenge. So this group was a team of three individuals had gone back to their administration, and they were able to use some of the title three funds to have a problem solving a brainstorming
where they could bring in multiple ways and creativity working around this so that they could find ways to be to make this more accessible for those parents in particular, and they're still working on that now and I'm excited to see what they bring up, but they were able to use title three funds, because it is related to let parent engagement and I, to be clear, cannot stand the term LEP, which stands for limited English proficiency, because our students are not limited and our parents are not limited.
So when I say that, keep in mind that I'm using that because that's the language, the working language that we have. But if, if you have the capacity in your school district, I would highly recommend having some conversations about what other language you can start utilizing in place of that.
But that could be used for LEP parent outreach and engagement.
And I will say all about that, Luis was using air quotes, LEP, because yes, I'm with you.
I hate it.
English learner, which centers English in the conversation and I'm so grateful to see so many schools moving toward things like multilingual learner or parents of another language other than English or whatever they may be working toward that isn't diminishing from the outside.
And I appreciate the perspective that you just brought across again the screen right to us because it's a constant reminder to always be thinking about that. And so I appreciate you reminding all of us.
It's true we, I was just in a meeting this morning, and with that same conversation someone asked, why, why did it change. I was like well sometimes it never should have been.
But let's let's let's aside as part from that.
I understand that in order to have a conversation that everyone understands, sometimes we have to lean on the language we've always known.
But that doesn't mean that we can't be collectively thinking about ways to move forward.
Right. But we can't evolve. A lot of times in my work, which is a lot of trauma informed work, we lean away from the word resilience because of the way that we've seen it be sometimes weaponized against students are seen as a have or have not quality, especially with our refugee learners, even in the same family where say one individual from a family will produce is again quote unquote resilient, while her younger brother does not.
So what does that mean he lacks this magical thing and he's less than so, just looking at in general when we're working in the multilingual landscape just having a greater awareness of the words and language we're using, we know how important languages.
So just bringing more intentionality to that can be helpful.
So I have to just bring this up real quickly because everything that you're saying I'm just like soaking all of it in. So having just finished my dissertation on this topic of cultural proficiency like I mean, this is so I wanted to ask this earlier but I'm so thankful for the conversation
that we've had, but in the conversation about the schedule funds and then the and how are you're making direct connections and how those federal dollars are helping students and families understand.
Culture. So, I don't know one wants to hear from me right now. What are these connections to culture that we're actually making right now can you, I'm sure that they're stood up to both of you, Luis and Martha so how what role is culture playing all this,
it sounds like a lot. It's the center of everything because culture is identity, culture is identity. And so we, in order to understand if we keep having these conversations about the whole student the whole student, who is the student that's their identity,
and we have all these aspects of identity right but cultural identity for our immigrant multilingual newcomer students is at the crux of everything, because for most of those individuals culture is literally their entire world.
So I'm going to just will break this super quick.
So, we need to hear this. I'm getting down to culture so just bear with me, but getting back to language, we use the language of identity so interchangeably and this is bothersome to its problematic because all of these words mean different things
and when we're assigning things to students are pulling pieces out or not understanding where culturally responsive teaching and learning occurs, it can be problematic. So we're going to start with that big bubble of race right those tidy checkboxes
our students take when they come in, they really don't tell us much about who our students are. There's no clear definition of race if you ask a gazillion scholars they all have something else to say.
And we know that it's really an invented human construct right. So let's dig down a little bit deeper, we get into this area of ethnicity and ethnicity we can think of as introducing an element of choice more who we who we choose to align with those values
from our background in our culture. And under that umbrella of ethnicity, we can have other things like language and nationality and heritage and culture.
So we can think of race is sort of this external construct that can be placed on a person and ethnicity is more of an internal construct that we present out into the world.
Moving down if we have race and ethnicity we can think of nationality which is where a person holds citizenship right or holds a passport, or the place where they choose to identify with as home.
So we have dreamers right who have been here, their whole lives and they maybe say that the US is their home, and they have every reason to believe that because we're under that umbrella of choice absolutely this is their home, but their legal documentation
might not say that. So we have to make space for that as well. So we have race and ethnicity and heritage or nationality and then heritage.
I tend to think of as our link to our more distant ancestors, right. So for those of us who have been in the States for many years. That's pretty broken. I'm predominantly Irish, I don't speak Gaelic, I don't know any Irish foods, I've never been to Ireland, but we have little tokens of pride in our house right those little flags or a cup holder or something that we'd have in our home.
And Martha your heritage connection is really robust it's really strong and for many of our multilingual newcomers, that's also the case. My own children whose father is Lebanese, they eat Lebanese food Arabic is their first language.
We, they practice, I eat they practice Ramadan they live in Lebanon for part of the year, their link is intact. So, again, for many of our multilingual newcomers that heritage link is intact.
And then finally we've gone all this way down and we can get into this area of culture. And so, all this work to get down to a space. I'll say if you haven't read Zaretta Hammond's book she breaks down this area of culture so wonderfully.
It's culturally responsive teaching in the brain, definitely in West Street. So, we'll talk about the surface level culture which are those things like holidays and flags and music and language and all those kind of surface level pieces, digging
a little bit deeper in that sort of unconscious level maybe your parents told you about them but it's not necessarily part of the everyday. We run into things here like eye contact for many of our East Africans for example that looking down as a sign of respect when
you speak to an elder and when we're here, and that conflict comes in right look me in the eye. This is a sign of respect. So if a student's looking down we run into that conflict.
And then finally in that deeper level we have this collective unconscious where these are the really deep subconscious level this is just the way the world operates, things like how we relate to other people concepts of individualism versus
collectivism concepts of saving face where how you move through the world if you how you act and present or quote unquote mistakes you make reflect not only on yourself but they reflect on your family members and from another family I would imagine
that there's some of that in your family to that you might be able to speak with it, how you if you get in trouble, it can reflect on your parents and your parents can perceive that as reflecting on the broader family name there's a lot more responsibility to the family
and that so that deepest level we've gone from race to ethnicity to nationality and heritage and culture and the layers of culture and that deepest level is this space where culturally responsive teaching and learning occurs.
Those are those culturally responsive or those those cultural reference points that we are speaking to and so the challenge with schools is when our outgoing messages are in misalignment with those deepest level cultural references, there's going to be disconnect.
So we're not suggesting that you overhaul your entire programming but small strides to match where our students and families are can make a big difference and I would guarantee that every educator who's listening as doing those strategies already, they may just not be aware that those are happening or how to link those together.
That was a really long.
No, that was. Yeah, I was gonna say, Louise. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead. I mean, I think about you know teachers who have done project based learning and that would speak to like a wander and explore teachers who have done things like numbered heads where the responsibilities
on one student to raise their hand that speaks to saving face classroom jobs or helpfulness or working toward a big project or class can do together that all speaks to values of collectivism.
So we're already doing all of these things we're not asking teachers to add more things to their plates. We're just saying you already have the tools, you are already an expert. So how can you take what you already know and plug it in to fit your students and where they're coming from a little bit better.
Yeah, that's awesome. Louise I've never heard anyone kind of explain that the way you have. So I feel like I just like learned a whole lot. And that little like you need your own TED talk here is what I'm trying to say.
No, that's awesome. And just kind of emphasizing to that whenever you know whenever our education system whenever it's not aligned with the culture with why that child is maybe responding the way they are or why they're not.
I've heard my entire life. Okay, kids are resilient, they'll adapt, they'll figure it out. And while there may be some sort of truth to that there's it still impacts people like it impacted me right like I understood that okay this is a culture and this is the way that American schools are.
And I was a filter to my parents, you know, and I couldn't necessarily have the emotions that I wanted to have right because my parents wouldn't understand, or because my teacher wouldn't understand and that that's a really kind of, it's a very hard way to navigate your
life as a child. And I think that just being able to support, bringing awareness to that and being able to support a child.
I don't know what I'm trying to say but like at the most basic level, you know what I'm saying at the most basic level that can be life changing. And I don't know that everyone truly understands that I don't know that everyone understands
the road, you know that a multilingual child is is navigating, it's a lot more pressure it's a lot more emotional it's it's a much bigger emotional intelligence at a much younger age.
Yeah, so I don't I don't know what I was trying to go with that but I think it's important that the alignment. I think that's hugely important what a great way to say that about just the heightened level of emotional and that awareness at an early
age. It what you're speaking to makes me think of what we would call identity integration and it's this idea that a person's two or more cultures can be compatible that they can live together that they can coexist and research shows us that when an
individual achieves identity integration, that there are decreased risks for mental health concerns and and suicide and increased risk for pro social behaviors and the benefits to that are amazing and when we don't have that we see also that that can create
a lot of problems. One thing that just absolutely fascinates me about the idea of culture is that it can be picked up or set down by any person at any time. Right.
And to illustrate this I mean maybe thinking about. I mean, I have gone through every culture there is in my like search to find myself so I can name a few here.
You have liquid culture, you have hip hop culture, you have deadhead culture, you have book nerd culture, you have you right you can pick it up any of these you can choose to pick up now that also gets into some gray area.
Let's go back to hip hop culture, where we can start to lean into things like appropriation right where we have to start considering where on which piece is tipping over past appreciation and into appropriation.
When we think about picking up and setting down culture that's something else to keep in mind. But culture can be picked up and set down by any person, which tells us that for our students, they're able to pick up the new culture, just as if we put an effort, we're able to learn about their culture and take some of that with us as well.
I mean, Kelly, I know from your lens as an educator, it's probably very similar to mine. I feel like I've grown more as a human being by having been blessed with the presence of my students from all over the world.
It's like having access to a global passport and a classroom right the learning and the things that you the ways that you grow in that time if you're open to learning from your students is remarkable.
I will definitely echo that 1000% my I was, I began in around 2008. I was an alternatively certified teacher. I was in the same year.
Oh my gosh. I had the best classroom in the best experience and to be completely frank, the most favorite position I've held of employment ever was being a sixth through eighth grade newcomer teacher.
And the class represented seven countries and eight different languages. And just to speak to your point, I talked about them, I think in almost every podcast at some point.
I just remember them. I have their pictures up. I mean, they're just like that group you know, anyhow, but I told the principal.
If you ever come down to my classroom, and you see me and I'm not teaching. It's because I'm not. I'm just learning.
And, and it was because once a week we had a dedicated time where I would sit down and in any mode that we could communicate through technology through acting through their friend that spoke English maybe a little bit more to, you know, tell me, or if I knew since I know Spanish, then I would try to help everyone understand
so we would, you know, use sheltered instruction, you know, I guess maybe there was more teaching going on what I thought but point is is that it was time for me to sit, because I want to learn from them.
Some days we just cried. And remember, they're newcomer students, six seventh and eighth graders all in one room, seven countries, eight different languages.
And I think they just start from, you know, and be there because there were different religions, cultures, backgrounds, food, taste, school, education that I have it that I not have it, I mean, coming, your experience coming to America, why you're here, not just people that came here because
they, you know, wanted to but because they had to, or because they were also refugee students, you know, they had all these different layers.
And I have those experiences myself. But I am so thankful, honestly, every single day because that was my first year teaching.
It set me up like they gave me the best platform to try to become the most culturally competent and proficient educator possible, but you know they also taught me is to how to learn more about myself, how to look inside of myself first, so I can be the best version
of myself outside for everyone else, especially whenever you're working with children.
It says a lot about your teaching style and your willingness to build a space that's full of trust and predictability and routine and those things that we know are so important for newcomer students and all students, because there's no way that I think those conversations
probably would have been had. If that wasn't the case.
I think, to be honest, I mean, I was in show business like I was dancing a Royal Caribbean cruise line as a singer and dancer whenever I got into education by accident as a permanent substitute so you know whenever you're in front of an audience, you just perform
you know so I was like well, so everything that we did was hands on like I didn't know what I was doing at the time, because you don't, you don't even have to be technically certified in this content area, ESL, I'm doing air quotes listeners for
Oklahoma certification to even be in quote unquote again ESL teacher.
So, I mean, anyone could just kind of have that job which is, you know, I look back I'm like that's insane like you need you need to know so much this to me.
I like our common. I like where we're going with all this but that federal funding like that helps support training for me to get even better what I was doing.
But whenever I was just in front of an audience I was trying to perform and trying to learn from them so we could all work together, little did I know I was receiving the highest level of education that I'll ever receive in my life, it was not my doctoral
degree. I'm thankful for that my highest level of education came from six to eight grade students.
I 100% believe that.
So, I was kind of hoping to ask both Kelly and Luis, just because I think you guys are way more involved and and see the landscape a bit more obviously, you know, our multilingual landscape has changed from when I was growing up in school.
So could you guys tell us a little bit about how, how it's been changing how it's been evolving and where you kind of hope to see it going.
All right, Kelly, let's go back to 2008. Here we go.
It was fun.
Also come from a theater and dance background. Maybe that's why maybe that's why we just came straight in like we're doing.
See, we're just like passionate got to say it get into it. Because if you weren't around in 2007 2008. So I came on board the first year was the inaugural year of place bridge Academy which is Denver's refugee magnet school and came on board as a newcomer
teacher, I went back to college late because I was busy dancing, doing professional things. So I came back to school late graduated almost 30 came into the classroom, and I can't tell you how vastly underprepared, I was.
What I just walked into there was if you're if you were recently graduated or if you just did a master's and culturally and linguistically. Fantastic, because let me tell you none of this.
We were winging it, and it was great and it was wonderful and I'll tell you what I loved the most is the, I wouldn't say lack of oversight is really the terrible choice of words but there was a freedom and the way that we were able to go about working with
students. That's great. But there's also I understand I do I really understand the need for some structure and being able to, you know, build some consistency across the school, but the freedom that we had was was fantastic.
It was also a curse that there were almost no resources so right in my classroom for example, we had the regular grade level textbooks and I also had a sixth grade class and they were giving them like first grade books about fuzzy ducks, and I'm like, they don't want to learn about
fuzzy ducks, they're freaking sixth graders. This is not, this is not a solution here, but we just, we were doing our best now when I tell you that I really like it just sits on my heart that I probably just really failed.
But we also like you said Kelly there was there was trust there was learning there were there were things going on and those are also my best best teaching years those are the ones that keep me in the world of education, it's those like we're
going to figure this out together guys because we are in it. And, you know, you made a comment about the Burmese speakers and that first year I had like, I don't know six kids on my roster from Burma, I was like this is great this is fabulous, I'm going to put them on a table
they're going to be.
We're going to like to sit down and everything's going to be wonderful.
And then we had, lo and behold my friend because Burmese like Burmese Burmese speaker, Karen Karen Chen, and these folks are literally, I mean a physical war with each other.
Yeah.
And be besties here's a glue stick. And it was not, it was not a thing. So, the thing and then you know just, you know, the Thai kids who were born in Burma but they're raised in the camps in Thailand and they had a completely different dynamic and didn't want anything to do with the
Burmese kids and I mean it was just, it was a thing, but it's those sorts of because of that, because of those situations, you are forced to jump in and really start to understand more of what's going on.
And that's something now, right, we have our Afghan students and I will make a disclaimer here. I'm saying Afghan so I hear a lot of folks say Afghani. So just keep in mind that Afghani is the currency, or a rug.
So if you're speaking about our Afghan students and families please be mindful that we're using Afghan as the term for people.
So our Afghan students we have say, the more urban Dari speakers, we have the Pashto speakers which tend to be more rural, tend to have less access to education. And when those groups come together in our schools we think we're going to put them all together
because all of our Afghan students are going to be friends. Again, there are decades and decades and decades of conflict. So sitting them at the lunchroom table together is not going to solve that, and can probably make a lot of things worse.
So we're seeing a lot of conflict now between those groups or say our Afghan students or Tajik speakers who are, you know, in a whole different dynamic.
So we're seeing the same thing play out today and because of that, we're forced to dig in and figure out a little bit more about okay how do we better understand these students and not go into this so blindly, so that we can reduce some of those
conflicts and barriers at the outset, instead of going in retroactively to fix the situation. So how can we go about that. So it all comes back to your point, Martha, we've come really really far.
But like I said in this case there are still gaps and there always will be because cultures are new. These cultures are new to us so there's more learning and when we become stuck in the rut of we know what's best for our families because this is the way it's done here.
And this is the quote unquote American way of doing school, then we're losing out, we're losing out in a lot of ways and more importantly our kids are losing out. So curriculum has come much further representation and our curriculum has come much further.
If you haven't had a chance, if you're an educator and haven't had a chance to utilize, they're called the cultural curriculum scorecards. It's Leah Peoples is the originator and I can leave a link to there but you can go through your own curriculum and I use this in my classroom library.
This is from New York University. And I have found some gaping holes in my own curriculum, some not related at all to newcomers, the holes in my classroom and home curriculum both had to do with gaps in my LGBTQIA plus and inability disability.
So those were my areas I had all kinds of books on all different cultures but I had like one on an ability disability. So those are some areas that I'm personally working to build out. So if you have not had a chance to utilize those scorecards, it does help if you're reviewing, especially
if you're reviewing a new curriculum to see what kinds of representation is showing up in that curriculum, how diverse the authorship is in there to make sure the students are seeing themselves reflected back at them and their texts, right?
Yeah, that's, that's good. Kelly, what about you?
Well, I mean, I'll just say copy and paste.
I was like, we've had such similar experiences because whenever there were students that came from the same country, you don't know until you experience it you're in that situation because you know I thought well, if you're from New York, but then you know you reflect back on it
and you think well, even if, even if you, so whenever I taught in Thailand, for example, just because you had to quote unquote, you know, United States Americans together, that didn't mean we were just going to get along, or necessarily, guess what, even speak the same language.
Oh, like, what about that right though, you know, and so it's funny how we can be so quick to do something because again we go, you know, go back to like the beginning of this conversation we check all those boxes for categorization purposes, how we depart to mentalize
and just put you over here, but we never expect that I want that for ourselves.
So I think that's a real interesting thing that that I know that that even I have to remind myself of daily in, in all the cultures in which I work. And so I want to say thank you also for even, you know, mentioning that I pulled up these cards on my other screen
over here. So I'm excited to look at these cultural connections cards I'm excited about that. But then you brought up also like the gaps that you were able to identify so thanks for being vulnerable and being human here with us because this is like I always say
planet fitness judgment free zone right here. Okay, so we just get to like, share with each other and learn from each other, because if we don't expose ourselves. We don't know what we don't know, and there is a culture in the LGBTQ community.
But there's also. So, culture, I guess my point is is not just based on geographical location.
No, you can move into communities you can pick them up and because you've been a part of that community you know certain language certain body gestures certain inside different language and you list up.
Yeah, certain things that you'll know that the rest of us won't because you have now moved into that culture and if you've been able to have that sense of identity integration, then you can still be a part of that culture, and a part of the culture you grew up
in and sometimes those cultures don't match up at all right they don't even get along. And so you have to learn how to navigate how to.
That's where we get into code switching to write that you have to learn kind of what face to put on and how to move into each culture and come back out again.
So, you know, through all of this what I'm realizing is that the reason why I think that I'm just, again, so incredibly grateful for the opportunity that I had is that I was just able to be exposed to all of this, like you said we just had to jump into it, you know,
because of our students that were right there.
I want everyone to have that opportunity, because it's fun, you get to learn more about yourself. We did have a lot of room for creativity, which was great that the grocery store down the street from the school always knew me, I would come in the same day
during my plan period to go get materials for an X science project, because I just did hands on activity so we could all participate.
And because I was able to be immersed in those cultures within the four walls I always said that being on the cruise ship of great but I traveled more culture within four walls than I ever did on the ocean, you know, because you got to learn so much.
How, how do we even maybe connecting this back to these title funds utilizing them this following year for educators how can we give ideas in different ways to our teacher friends and leaders to use this funding or to advocate for the utilization of this funding
to focus on what we've identified as the core of what we should focus on which is culture overall to help academic excellence at the same time.
Absolutely. So, a couple things here one I would always keep our trauma informed moves.
If we have a pool for funding it's a consistent growth and I will say that there's a lot of siloing going on in our ML world right we're always kind of on the outskirts of things.
And theoretically, multilingual instruction should overlap with trauma informed instruction should overlap with culturally responsive teaching. And so we have this sort of triple van diagram right in my view at the sweet spot at the very center of all of those things
is universal design for learning. That's the sweet spot. So if we can and if you're not familiar with UDL or universal design for learning. That is an area that I would suggest looking into because if you apply.
If you move your funding into training and development in that area. What UDL does essentially is reduce or eliminate barriers at the outset, so that all students have access to learning.
So this is great for ML because your curriculum might not necessarily be designed for ML.
So you use a universal design concept you scan for barriers before you start and then you work to erase or eliminate those barriers at the beginning.
We think this is a lot of extra work but it's not it's actually far less work because if you're in the ML world, you're used to making modifications left and right you're trained to make to do modify modify modify.
So universal design for learning takes that off. So instead of modifying giving up modification here and a modification here and a modification here. We are just eliminating those barriers again at the outset.
So universal design for learning really started in gaming and then moved over to building design. It wasn't universal design and moved into learning after.
So when we think even about buildings, you know we think about a ramp that is designed clearly with one demographic in mind. It's designed to increase accessibility for folks who have a physical limitation.
But who else might use that ramp right somebody who has a temporary disability a mom carrying a pushing a stroller toddler learning to walk and can't do the stairs yet.
Somebody needs to tie their dog up outside a skateboarder. It's creating pathways for all kinds of people to move into that building at the outset.
So that's created when the building is being built. So you do is really again if you haven't looked into it.
And I'm happy if you want to reach out I'll share more but that would be an area that I would definitely focus funding or development in as universal design for learning.
I will say also one of the challenges we run into in multilingual education is bringing on content level or content teachers.
So again when we're siloed out we have kind of the English language teachers or the ELD teachers in this bubble and that's what they do.
And then we have content teachers not all for those of you who are out doing your thing. Thank you.
But some content teachers are like I got my thing. It's not broken. It doesn't need to be fixed. And I'm just cruising along.
It's more work. I don't have time to do all of these like multilingual strategies. I'm just doing my thing.
But for those folks as well just again having those pathways cleared at the beginning makes their content more accessible to multilinguals and decreases their workload as they move through that.
Yeah. Why build stairs if everyone can use a ramp. Exactly.
Or you know closed captioning are another one. I mean that's it's genius and it's created at the outset.
But who else uses closed captioning. I use them while I'm like laying down next to my husband at night because he does not want to hear tick tock and then like on Netflix.
For me is you know my Arabic is I'm not proficient I speak at the flu proficiency of like a fourth grader like politics deep bubble stuff street slang I'm out.
But if we're watching TV and I'll be that I need to be able to have they can benefit so many other folks for so many reasons.
And as we work together we do a lot of professional developments with teams and there's so many ahas like oh I do this thing but I do this only for my MLS if I did this just for everybody instead of modifying for my MLS my students with visual needs could do this my students with kinesthetic needs could do this my students with autism can do this my students with my high functioning students can take a spin on this.
So it introduces all these elements of choice that just make it more open to everyone. So long story short I would say if you want to utilize funding parent engagement trauma informed instruction and looking at you deal.
100% and I appreciate you, you explaining that so eloquently also just, you know, again, in my conversations with other leaders and whenever we're discussing what we want or need to do for professional development.
I like to kind of, you know, listen, and then talk through that conversation, but kind of bring it back around where if we buy that, like you were talking about by that design by building that ramp instead of the stairs if we do this with the mindset of connecting with all of our students for all of them.
It's going to be a benefit for everyone it's going to, you're going to connect to everyone and it's not going to be one more thing you have to do.
It's going to be the thing that you're supposed to do. Yes, and that's like culturally responsive teaching you're probably already doing it. Yes, that's the thing we're not having you do with you have a kid sitting on headphones if you have stations set up.
If you have a choice menu where students can choose to show what they know, and a visual way or as a presentation or they can do it on slides or they can.
Those are UDL strategies, so you're already doing it and again, coming from the lens of a teacher the last thing I ever want is more work on my plate.
So, when we introduce things or when we recommend things it's never to add more things to teachers plates, just like culturally responsive teaching it's picking out, what are you already an expert in what do you already feel comfortable doing what do you already
feel comfortable doing. Wonderful. How can we make that work for everybody to minimize or decrease your workload and increase access for all the students who are participating.
1000%.
Martha.
So that I feel like Louisa's just really left us with a lot of great gems today. I'm really thankful that there are people like you Kelly and Louise who are active in children's lives, because that wasn't the case when I was growing up.
So, this is really just like, I'm kind of processing, a lot of this right now.
But yeah, I, it's exactly why I wanted to do this with the lease I feel like she puts things very eloquently she makes. She attaches real life situations that then make me understand like okay this funding is impacting a real kid and a real family
like in this way, and so just wanted to bring more awareness to this from someone who has lived, you know the American education system without the support. So, thank you.
I will maybe just finish with I would say what really, if we're thinking about potential impacts and cuts to funding specifically around Title Three, the thing that stands out to me the most go so far beyond education, right.
So, if we think about, I mean even in your parents case Martha, when we, when I talk about trauma, I don't use the word trauma. I always use the word transition shock, because transition shock makes space for trauma, it makes space for post traumatic stress, it makes space for high ACEs and all of those things.
But it also captures culture shock. And so when we're talking about students who are new to the United States, we can't have a conversation about trauma and from my lens without also making space for culture shock.
And if we dig down into culture shock, and when we have folks coming in.
We, we think of it kind of like a teeter totter right and so on one side we have isolation, and on one side we have adoption and an adoption, you lean so far into the new culture, but it's at the expense of your heritage culture.
Remember we want that identity integration right so if you lean all the way in, you are dressing talking acting you're refusing to speak your heritage language you're pushing away we have a lot of conflicts of parents here we're especially teens are pushing back against their
heritage culture because many of our older folks fall into isolation where they lean so far into their heritage culture at the expense of the new one and then it's really hard to make a home and make a space and feel connected and so and both of those areas,
we can have negative outcomes. What we're really aiming for is this kind of bounce spot on the teeter totter, which we can think of as the place of integration.
Title three funding helps that with all of the vast things that it provides helps us help students find that place of integration where they can make sense of their L one and L two, their C one and C two plus that they can see the good and bad in both,
and then we can be a part of both in a pro social way. So when we're thinking about long term impacts on our community what happens to these students, after they leave our schools.
If we haven't helped students reach a pro social place where they can be an active integrated part into our communities where they can be business owners and be workers and be an entrepreneurs and be innovative thinkers, then that creates
problems in our communities in the future. So when we have these title three funding cuts, which cut parent integration, we're going to start seeing it, which cut language skills, which cut trauma informed learning, then we're seeing that teeter totter bouncing all over the place
and it is more and more challenging to reach that spot of integration. And that to me is the real challenge. When we talk about cuts, it's not learning English right now because they will. It's what happened after they leave our classrooms.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's good.
You could not have said that better in this whole time I just get more and more passionate and more and more fired up, truly. And just because this is this is important for everyone out there that we can, you know, I'm great great conversation so much that
we've been able to learn and take away, but just a true reminder that this is something that all of us as educators have got to make sure that we're trying to learn about as much as possible, because it impacts all of our students in so many different ways, and our, our public
systems our our education systems are the heartbeat for our communities and our societies, and we need to make sure that we are truly making space to listen and learn from the people whom we serve.
And we have the privilege to serve and to learn from in this great nation of multicultural and multi diverse with multi different backgrounds as well and we all become better because of that.
And we have the privilege to of course, try to stay informed as much as possible but at the same time, to take it seriously, and it's only going to benefit you more, both personally and professionally, I would say.
Any last closing thoughts anyone would like to share.
This has been so much fun. Thanks for hanging out you two.
And Martha, thank you so much for being our co host today. It was really really such a great time do you have you want to say anything to Louise.
Yeah, thank you Louise. Thanks for letting me kind of pick your brain about what's going on and just breaking down the importance of this for those, those, those who are listening.
And Louise I just want to thank you as well so much. I, you know, I told someone just the other day, the more that you learn, you basically learn just there's more that you don't know.
And I'm just so grateful.
But I'm really grateful because I was definitely a student today and I got to learn so much from you and I was thankful I was able to share this conversation with you and with Martha.
So thank you all so much. So, thank you for being here. We appreciate you. Thank you to all the listeners who have been with us this past hour or so.
Again, just a reminder, we will have all the information for Louise in the summary of this episode for all the links and special shout out to our producer Mike overhaul.
Thank you so much our goes today, Martha Caramale and then Louise again Louise and you're going to thank you so much for being here enriching all of our lives.
And thank you for helping us making so many cultural connections today. I appreciate you wish you all the best and all of our educators. Thank you for your service.
Bye.