1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:20,720 Welcome to Cultural Connections Lab. I'm your host, Kelly Forbes. We are here to talk with 2 00:00:20,720 --> 00:00:25,520 educational professionals around the world to impact and influence the education system as we 3 00:00:25,520 --> 00:00:30,640 focus on cultural connections and the education of multilingual diverse students. We're excited 4 00:00:30,640 --> 00:00:44,240 to have you join us today and we sincerely hope you enjoy the show. Hello listeners. My name is 5 00:00:44,240 --> 00:00:50,640 Kelly Forbes and I am excited to be here with our producer Mike Overholt as well as Dr. Jeffrey 6 00:00:50,640 --> 00:00:56,880 Taylor Tribble on another episode of Cultural Connections Lab. I am here with Mr. Dr. David 7 00:00:56,880 --> 00:01:02,880 Holbrook. He's a nationally renowned expert in the administration of EL programs. He earned his PhD 8 00:01:02,880 --> 00:01:08,960 in linguistics at the University of the West Indies in the Republic of Trinidad in Tobago 9 00:01:08,960 --> 00:01:15,280 and has over 25 years of experience working with speakers of other languages. He has lived in five 10 00:01:15,280 --> 00:01:20,400 countries and worked in more than 15. He spent nearly six years at the Wyoming Department of 11 00:01:20,400 --> 00:01:25,520 Education where he held positions as federal programs division director, title one director, 12 00:01:25,520 --> 00:01:29,680 title three director, and for six months was director of both the federal programs and 13 00:01:29,680 --> 00:01:35,360 assessment divisions. Dr. Holbrook also served as the state's Native American education consultant 14 00:01:35,360 --> 00:01:42,240 working with the northern Arapaho and eastern Shoshone tribes on the Wind River Indian reservation. 15 00:01:42,240 --> 00:01:46,480 As federal programs division director, he was responsible for oversight of federal education 16 00:01:46,480 --> 00:01:51,520 programs including McKinney-Vento programs for students experiencing homelessness. He trained 17 00:01:51,520 --> 00:01:56,240 with the U.S. Department of Education and participated in federal monitoring of title three 18 00:01:56,240 --> 00:02:01,440 in five states. He has served 13 years with the National Association of English Learner Program 19 00:02:01,440 --> 00:02:08,240 Administrators, NAELPA, two years as president and is now NAELPA's executive director. He also works 20 00:02:08,240 --> 00:02:13,360 for TransAct Communications and is TransAct's executive director of federal programs and state 21 00:02:13,360 --> 00:02:19,280 relationships. In relation to NAELPA, AEILPA is an organization, it's a professional organization that 22 00:02:19,280 --> 00:02:23,680 serves members and stakeholders at the local, state, and national levels. Their mission is to 23 00:02:23,680 --> 00:02:27,680 provide professional learning communication and advocacy for multilingual learners and their 24 00:02:27,680 --> 00:02:32,560 families and communities. They aim to be an expert voice on behalf of the state and local 25 00:02:32,560 --> 00:02:36,800 education agencies in supporting the success of multilinguals across the U.S. 26 00:02:36,800 --> 00:02:41,760 NAELPA facilitates intercommunication among members to promote effective English language development, 27 00:02:41,760 --> 00:02:47,760 dual language, bilingual, and similar programs to achieve educational goals. They disseminate 28 00:02:47,760 --> 00:02:52,640 information on research-based instructional strategies, news, tools, and resources for 29 00:02:52,640 --> 00:02:57,760 multilingual program administrators. NAELPA also provides professional learning opportunities 30 00:02:57,760 --> 00:03:03,120 to local and state education agencies, disseminating best practices and equips educators with the 31 00:03:03,120 --> 00:03:07,680 skills and knowledge to meet the needs of multilingual learners. Additionally, NAELPA advocates 32 00:03:07,680 --> 00:03:11,840 for multilingual learners at the national level by collaborating with organizations supporting 33 00:03:11,840 --> 00:03:17,520 fair and equitable policies and leading actions to develop effective policies that support 34 00:03:17,520 --> 00:03:24,640 multilingual learners and their families. With all of that, a big welcome to the renowned 35 00:03:24,640 --> 00:03:29,760 Dr. David Holbrook. That was a lot. How are you doing today? 36 00:03:29,760 --> 00:03:34,960 I'm doing good. Thanks. I'm going to tell NAELPA they need to hire you to start introducing 37 00:03:34,960 --> 00:03:36,960 NAELPA. He's awesome, isn't he? 38 00:03:36,960 --> 00:03:40,320 Yeah, that was one heck of an introduction. That's really cool. 39 00:03:40,320 --> 00:03:46,080 Well, you're one heck of a gentleman to have on here with us. And we are truly just enthusiastic 40 00:03:46,080 --> 00:03:51,680 about having you here and also all the work that's being done through NAELPA. And I am 41 00:03:51,680 --> 00:03:56,320 sporting the t-shirt today, listeners. Just so you know, I am wearing the National Association 42 00:03:56,320 --> 00:04:00,880 of English Language Program Administrators t-shirt. Where can I go buy that, David? 43 00:04:00,880 --> 00:04:05,920 Just give Jenna a shout. She's got them. She can sell you one and mail it to you. 44 00:04:05,920 --> 00:04:10,240 Yes, I will do a little plug here also for the website for now. If you are interested 45 00:04:10,240 --> 00:04:19,840 listeners, the website is naelpa.org. Again, naelpa.org and encourage all of you to go 46 00:04:19,840 --> 00:04:26,000 on and visit. But going right into our conversation today, we just are excited to have you here, 47 00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:29,920 Dr. Holbrook. Thank you so much for everything that you do in the field of education. And 48 00:04:29,920 --> 00:04:33,440 we'd like to start off with just trying to get to know and have our listeners get to 49 00:04:33,440 --> 00:04:36,000 know you a little bit more personally and professionally. 50 00:04:36,000 --> 00:04:41,600 Well, thanks. It's my pleasure to be here. I'll follow up. I should have been a little 51 00:04:41,600 --> 00:04:47,040 more specific. If anyone is interested in a NAELPA t-shirt, they can email Jenna Webb, 52 00:04:47,040 --> 00:04:58,000 jenna.webb@naelpa.org. So that email address will get you right to her and ask her about 53 00:04:58,000 --> 00:05:01,280 the t-shirts if you're interested. But anyway, thank you. 54 00:05:01,280 --> 00:05:06,080 Yeah. And in that regard, I know we'll be talking a fair amount about NAELPA, but is 55 00:05:06,080 --> 00:05:10,480 there any other swag, cool stuff that can be purchased to support the organization? 56 00:05:10,480 --> 00:05:12,480 We just a t-shirt. 57 00:05:12,480 --> 00:05:17,600 That's the only thing that we have that you can and it's a suggested donation. It's not 58 00:05:17,600 --> 00:05:24,000 really a sale. So we have a suggested donation. I think it's $30 for the t-shirt, something 59 00:05:24,000 --> 00:05:25,200 like that. Is that right? 60 00:05:25,200 --> 00:05:30,400 That's correct. That is correct. I bought one and I'm just trying to remember. Yeah. 61 00:05:30,400 --> 00:05:34,400 So yeah. Anyway, go ahead. Back to you. 62 00:05:34,400 --> 00:05:38,000 Now, if you don't mind, could you just share a little bit for our listeners just about 63 00:05:38,000 --> 00:05:42,800 who is Dr. David Holbrook personally and professionally? Just a little bit about you. 64 00:05:42,800 --> 00:05:51,600 Sure. You know, I've one of my passions is has always been, you know, trying to make 65 00:05:51,600 --> 00:05:57,360 sure I'm in some type of role that's helping other people. It's something that motivates 66 00:05:57,360 --> 00:06:02,800 me, you know, keeps a smile on my face when I see that what I've done actually, you know, 67 00:06:02,800 --> 00:06:06,320 make somebody else happy or helps them out in some way. So I'm just trying to remember 68 00:06:06,320 --> 00:06:12,000 somebody else happy or helps them out in some way, shape or form. So that's sort of, you 69 00:06:12,000 --> 00:06:18,160 know, when it comes to everything I do, the internal motivation for me is along those 70 00:06:18,160 --> 00:06:28,320 lines. So I worked for 16 years overseas doing original linguistic research, trying to identify 71 00:06:28,320 --> 00:06:34,160 language groups that were ripe for language development. There's around 7,000 languages 72 00:06:34,160 --> 00:06:40,080 in the world and, you know, about half of them, maybe a little more than half of them 73 00:06:40,080 --> 00:06:46,720 actually have a developed writing system. And so, you know, trying to do the I did linguistic 74 00:06:46,720 --> 00:06:52,560 research to determine what's called language boundaries and ethnolinguistic vitality or 75 00:06:52,560 --> 00:06:57,760 whether a language is living or dying. And so my PhD was a comparison of the grammar 76 00:06:57,760 --> 00:07:04,480 of four languages to try to classify them to see if they could either share literacy 77 00:07:04,480 --> 00:07:10,480 materials or adapt them easily. Do you mind taking this back even further? Like how did 78 00:07:10,480 --> 00:07:15,920 you even become interested in this topic? So when I was like, it's not typical that 79 00:07:15,920 --> 00:07:20,480 everybody somebody's just like, Hey man, you know, I want to study the languages of the 80 00:07:20,480 --> 00:07:25,760 world. I fell into that category too through my travels. But like, how did you become interested 81 00:07:25,760 --> 00:07:34,640 in this topic? Yeah. So when I was in college, I was at a Bible college and I took a course 82 00:07:34,640 --> 00:07:39,680 in ancient Greek and ended up doing three years of ancient Greek and did really well 83 00:07:40,800 --> 00:07:47,440 in those studies. And that sort of got me interested in the whole side of Bible translation 84 00:07:47,440 --> 00:07:51,920 and things like that. And I found this organization called Wycliffe Bible Translators and they have 85 00:07:51,920 --> 00:07:57,520 a sister organization that started off with the name the Summer Institute of Linguistics, but it 86 00:07:57,520 --> 00:08:03,840 eventually merged to just SIL International and they're based out of Dallas. And so I looked into 87 00:08:03,840 --> 00:08:10,800 working with them and ended up working on the SIL side doing this linguistic research. And Wycliffe 88 00:08:10,800 --> 00:08:15,040 Bible Translators would take that and decide where they would send their Bible translators, 89 00:08:15,040 --> 00:08:21,440 but they would use the research that SIL did to make some of those determinations. A lot of other 90 00:08:21,440 --> 00:08:30,640 academics and other linguistic researchers really loved and really loved the linguistic papers and 91 00:08:30,640 --> 00:08:35,200 other things that folks who work with SIL put out because they're putting out a lot of papers and 92 00:08:35,200 --> 00:08:43,200 data that in some of these rural and remote and minority languages that you don't see a lot of 93 00:08:43,200 --> 00:08:48,800 data for unless you can go there yourself. And it's still a very prominent organization, correct? 94 00:08:48,800 --> 00:08:54,080 Oh yeah. Yeah. It's a multinational organization. They've got tons of work all over the world. 95 00:08:54,960 --> 00:09:00,720 I worked in Guyana in South America and with the English-based Creoles in the Caribbean. 96 00:09:01,680 --> 00:09:07,680 That was where the majority of my work was. My comparison, my grammatical comparison for my 97 00:09:08,240 --> 00:09:14,320 PhD was the Creoles in Guyana, Grenada, St. Vincent, and Tobago. 98 00:09:14,320 --> 00:09:19,280 Wow. I'm curious. What were the findings? 99 00:09:20,960 --> 00:09:25,120 Well, the elevator speech version, right? You know, it's a dissertation. 100 00:09:27,040 --> 00:09:33,280 So Creole languages have what's called isolating morphosyntex. What basically that means is 101 00:09:33,280 --> 00:09:40,160 they don't use affixation. So like in English, past tense is ed. In Creole, it's a word that comes 102 00:09:40,160 --> 00:09:45,840 before the verb rather than an affix after the verb. And so there's a different grammatical 103 00:09:45,840 --> 00:09:52,720 structure. The grammatical grammars are more based on some West African languages. So you have this 104 00:09:52,720 --> 00:09:58,640 English vocabulary that's redefined and used differently and the grammar is different. 105 00:09:58,640 --> 00:10:06,160 And so when I started trying to decide how am I going to determine how to classify these languages, 106 00:10:06,160 --> 00:10:15,520 because typical languages over time as they develop and grow apart, like we know that Italian 107 00:10:15,520 --> 00:10:20,400 and Spanish and French are all similar. They're all those romance languages. They all come from 108 00:10:20,400 --> 00:10:27,680 a root language. But with a Creole language, you have a dominant social group that ends up 109 00:10:27,680 --> 00:10:34,800 interacting with a subordinate social group. And you get this language that comes out of it that 110 00:10:34,800 --> 00:10:38,640 isn't really directly connected to either one of them because you have the vocabulary 111 00:10:38,640 --> 00:10:43,120 borrowed from one and the grammar kind of superimposed from another. So how do you group 112 00:10:43,120 --> 00:10:50,240 those? Because there's no way to do it linguistically, genetically in a sense. And so when I started 113 00:10:50,240 --> 00:10:55,840 looking at because of that isolating morphosyntex where you have separate words for the grammar, 114 00:10:55,840 --> 00:11:03,600 I started looking at the words used to mark the grammars of these languages. And when I did that, 115 00:11:03,600 --> 00:11:11,120 I noticed that there was a pattern in terms of the main difference between some of these Creoles, 116 00:11:11,120 --> 00:11:17,360 because the grammars were very similar, but the grammatical markers for like past tense and other 117 00:11:17,360 --> 00:11:23,280 things tended to be either different or slightly different, or they were variations that weren't 118 00:11:23,280 --> 00:11:31,520 the same between the Creoles. And so I looked at a list of a whole bunch of grammatical markers, 119 00:11:31,520 --> 00:11:41,360 everything from personal pronouns to the verbal markers to just a whole host of things 120 00:11:42,560 --> 00:11:48,320 that I was looking at. So when I pulled all of those together and started doing comparisons, 121 00:11:48,320 --> 00:11:56,000 prepositions, all kinds of stuff, I was able to, based on the percentages of similarity, 122 00:11:56,000 --> 00:12:01,280 be able to start grouping these languages and actually proving some of the differences 123 00:12:01,280 --> 00:12:08,160 some of the existing classifications as incorrect, because they were basing them on 124 00:12:09,200 --> 00:12:12,880 people migrations rather than on actual linguistic features. 125 00:12:14,160 --> 00:12:21,040 Wow, this is incredibly interesting to me, actually. But I also love this topic. I love 126 00:12:21,040 --> 00:12:27,360 this conversation. There's research that I'm sure that you're well aware of, and that the way that 127 00:12:27,360 --> 00:12:32,080 we think is different based on the languages that we know, because there are different brain 128 00:12:32,080 --> 00:12:38,720 and cognitive patterns. And so the way, so therefore thinking becomes differentiated based 129 00:12:38,720 --> 00:12:43,920 on the different types of languages that we do know. And just hearing all of that right now 130 00:12:43,920 --> 00:12:49,200 makes me just want to ask the question, did you find any cultural, you know, cultural connections? 131 00:12:49,200 --> 00:12:54,000 But were there cultural connections to what you were learning when it comes to the linguistic 132 00:12:54,000 --> 00:13:01,200 components of these groups of people in their language in the way that their culture is 133 00:13:01,200 --> 00:13:07,680 influenced based on their language or vice versa, versus the English language, for example, you know, 134 00:13:07,680 --> 00:13:12,880 and then even through the translations of the Bible? I mean, that's just really interesting. 135 00:13:13,680 --> 00:13:20,160 Yeah, there's a couple things I'll point out. One of them, there are definitely some, you know, 136 00:13:20,160 --> 00:13:24,320 cultural, when I say cultural schema, some things that are happening within a culture. 137 00:13:24,320 --> 00:13:30,240 And you see that reflected in the vocabulary. So like when I was living in Guyana in South America, 138 00:13:31,120 --> 00:13:35,840 they were, they were former British colony, they gained their independence, and then became 139 00:13:35,840 --> 00:13:42,720 communist and tried to be like, tried to be self-sustaining. So they cut off imports and 140 00:13:42,720 --> 00:13:51,440 did all of this stuff that ended up in situations where there was a lot of, a lot of hunger and 141 00:13:51,440 --> 00:13:57,520 other issues, you know, poverty, hunger, just because of the way the government ran things 142 00:13:57,520 --> 00:14:03,360 and the way that they, they cut off all imports. And, you know, it was, it was strange. So you end 143 00:14:03,360 --> 00:14:12,640 up, you ended up with a lot of innovation and, and how they fed themselves. So there were things that 144 00:14:13,600 --> 00:14:18,000 people would give me to eat that I would go, how did you ever figure out that you could actually 145 00:14:18,000 --> 00:14:22,800 eat this thing? You know, yeah, like there was, there was this, there was this little bush that 146 00:14:22,800 --> 00:14:27,120 grew these yellow pods and, you know, the yellow, when the yellow pods were ready, they were ripe, 147 00:14:27,120 --> 00:14:32,960 and you crack them open. And there are these square black seeds that were covered with this white 148 00:14:32,960 --> 00:14:39,280 pulp, which was a little sweet. And they would like pop these open and get the, put it in their mouth 149 00:14:39,280 --> 00:14:45,920 and spit out the seed and eat the pulp because it, it was sweet and it was a source of, you know, 150 00:14:45,920 --> 00:14:52,080 food. So I was, I always amazed me how they even figured out that that was even edible and that it 151 00:14:52,080 --> 00:14:58,880 actually tasted decent. And there were other similar things with seeds that had pulp and juice 152 00:14:58,880 --> 00:15:05,920 around them. One of them they called Guinnips and it was this, you know, seed, seed pod that was a 153 00:15:05,920 --> 00:15:11,680 little smaller than a golf ball. And you'd crack open the green outside and, you know, pop this 154 00:15:11,680 --> 00:15:17,360 thing in your mouth and choose, you know, scrape off the pulp from the seed itself, which the seed 155 00:15:17,360 --> 00:15:24,560 itself was like a large boulder, you know, like a marble boulder. But I mean, they, they ate this 156 00:15:24,560 --> 00:15:30,800 kind of stuff all the time. And so when you, they had to be creative and the food they could get. 157 00:15:30,800 --> 00:15:38,080 And so when you start looking at the terminology that they have for, you know, if someone is like 158 00:15:38,080 --> 00:15:45,360 a glutton or, you know, greedy for food or things like that, they had multiple terms that described 159 00:15:45,360 --> 00:15:53,280 people who wouldn't share food, who were gluttonous and greedy and all this kind of stuff. But it was 160 00:15:53,280 --> 00:15:59,520 like all of this different terminology just related to bad behaviors toward food. 161 00:16:00,240 --> 00:16:04,480 Wow, that is interesting. Those are things I can't, you know, I love these conversations 162 00:16:04,480 --> 00:16:12,960 because these are things that you can't Google translate. No, no, no. So, so you, when you go 163 00:16:12,960 --> 00:16:18,720 into a language group, you see those kinds of things. So what, go ahead, sorry. No, what were 164 00:16:18,720 --> 00:16:25,280 you gonna say? Oh, I think I want to ask it after you complete your thought, because I have a 165 00:16:25,280 --> 00:16:29,680 question that I think will divert your thoughts. So I want you to finish it. I was gonna, I was 166 00:16:29,680 --> 00:16:35,680 gonna go to the Bible translation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm curious. Because, you know, I did a 167 00:16:35,680 --> 00:16:43,440 little bit of piloting with, you know, with some, with a couple of verses in scripture, you know, 168 00:16:43,440 --> 00:16:49,920 to try to see how people would respond to it, things like that. And it was really interesting. 169 00:16:50,560 --> 00:16:56,800 You know, I was able to get in front of a group of pastors and I had this young man who I was 170 00:16:56,800 --> 00:17:03,280 working with stand up and, you know, in these countries, the national language is English. 171 00:17:03,280 --> 00:17:08,720 It's the language of business. It's the language of banking. It's the language of school. But at 172 00:17:08,720 --> 00:17:14,080 home, you know, the language of the heart, the language they use to talk, the language they 173 00:17:14,080 --> 00:17:20,160 yell at their kids in is Creole. You know, so it's the language of passion, in a sense, the 174 00:17:20,160 --> 00:17:27,040 language of their heart. So I got this young man and I stood up and I read this passage of scripture 175 00:17:27,040 --> 00:17:34,160 that he had worked with me to translate in English. And then I asked him to come up and he read it in 176 00:17:34,160 --> 00:17:41,760 Creole. And we had probably, you know, 70 pastors in the room and they just sat there quietly while 177 00:17:41,760 --> 00:17:46,800 I read it. And we're like, why is this guy reading a scripture to us? We're all pastors. I know this 178 00:17:46,800 --> 00:17:53,120 kind of thing. You know, it was like, I was boring them to tears. And this, this, this young man got 179 00:17:53,120 --> 00:17:59,920 up and started reading the same passage in Creole and their, their eyes lit up and they were like, 180 00:17:59,920 --> 00:18:04,800 yeah, you know, and when he finished, you know, everybody cheered. One guy stood up and raised 181 00:18:04,800 --> 00:18:10,800 his hands like, yeah, all of this stuff. And it was, it was the same passage of scripture, but it was 182 00:18:10,800 --> 00:18:16,800 in their language and it made such a huge difference for them in terms of how they responded. 183 00:18:17,600 --> 00:18:24,720 And, and so, and for me, um, that, that whole concept you were talking about of understanding 184 00:18:24,720 --> 00:18:30,240 things differently when you, when you understand a second language and you can read scripture in a 185 00:18:30,240 --> 00:18:36,160 second language, there are nuances of meeting and other things that come out of that because the 186 00:18:36,160 --> 00:18:42,320 cult, because of the cultural differences. And I actually love reading and listening to, 187 00:18:43,200 --> 00:18:48,560 to scripture and Creole because of that for me. Um, so that, that, that's one of the things that 188 00:18:48,560 --> 00:18:55,120 I really like, cause it was like, I kind of, you know, English is my first language and, you know, 189 00:18:55,120 --> 00:19:01,120 but having worked and studied Creole, I just, it just, I don't know, I just get a joy out of 190 00:19:01,120 --> 00:19:06,320 hearing scripture and Creole. Definitely though. I mean, that connection to that, that emotional 191 00:19:06,320 --> 00:19:11,360 side, that, that passion side is so real. I think important for us to recognize that something that's 192 00:19:11,360 --> 00:19:16,400 very valuable, um, in our delivery of anything that we're giving based on the audience with, 193 00:19:16,400 --> 00:19:21,520 to whom we're speaking. Yeah. I guess that does lead into the question that I was going to ask is 194 00:19:21,520 --> 00:19:27,600 how have these really intriguing experiences, life experiences that you have, have had 195 00:19:28,160 --> 00:19:33,760 internationally, how, how have they changed you and led to the work and passion you have for helping 196 00:19:33,760 --> 00:19:40,240 minority communities here in the United States? Well, most of the people groups I've worked with, 197 00:19:40,240 --> 00:19:46,720 you know, they're, they are in a big way minority groups and they don't have a lot of, you know, 198 00:19:46,720 --> 00:19:52,480 influence in the world. They're not like living in a major world powers, things like that. And, 199 00:19:53,040 --> 00:19:58,000 you know, like I mentioned, my, my, a lot of my motivation internally is always what can I do to 200 00:19:58,000 --> 00:20:02,160 help people? So, you know, trying to bring literacy and the scriptures to people was, 201 00:20:02,160 --> 00:20:08,560 was really important to me. So, uh, when I got to the point where I, I left there, uh, I struggled 202 00:20:08,560 --> 00:20:12,800 for a little bit trying to figure out how, what do I do now? Where am I going to go? And, um, 203 00:20:13,600 --> 00:20:19,840 I started, uh, looking for work. I, I, I'm a handyman. So I was, you know, I helped a friend 204 00:20:19,840 --> 00:20:24,720 build a pole barn. I, you know, refinished the bathroom. I did all kinds of stuff, uh, just to 205 00:20:24,720 --> 00:20:31,200 try to make a little money. The organization SIL knew that I could write academically really well. 206 00:20:31,200 --> 00:20:36,400 And they had some linguists who weren't good writers. So they hired me on a contract basis to 207 00:20:36,400 --> 00:20:43,840 basically work with some other linguists to help write up, um, academic reports on language, uh, 208 00:20:43,840 --> 00:20:48,240 that, that those linguists were studying so that they could be published, things like that. Um, 209 00:20:48,240 --> 00:20:53,840 so I was doing that. And then I started teaching, um, in Colorado State University's intensive 210 00:20:53,840 --> 00:21:00,880 English program. Are you from Colorado originally? No, I was born in Michigan. Okay. And how did you 211 00:21:00,880 --> 00:21:08,720 land up in Colorado? Um, my older brother was here and, and I had a, a job offer at Colorado 212 00:21:08,720 --> 00:21:17,200 State University. Uh, so that's how I ended up over here. Uh, but adjuncts in Colorado State, 213 00:21:17,200 --> 00:21:22,880 they don't make a lot of money. I was working three jobs. Yeah. I was working three jobs to 214 00:21:22,880 --> 00:21:29,200 make ends meet. So I was looking for something else and, uh, working, you know, teaching ESL, 215 00:21:29,200 --> 00:21:34,240 basically to students from overseas who needed to improve their English in order to be able to, 216 00:21:34,240 --> 00:21:38,160 they'd been accepted at the university, but in order to be able to take classes, they had to 217 00:21:38,160 --> 00:21:44,640 improve their English skills. So I was working in that type of a program. Um, and, uh, I applied 218 00:21:45,280 --> 00:21:49,920 for the title three director position, uh, at the Wyoming department of education thinking, 219 00:21:50,560 --> 00:21:55,520 okay, I know and understand English learner issues, but I know nothing about federal education law. 220 00:21:55,520 --> 00:21:59,760 There, there's no way I'm going to get this job. And so they called me up for an interview 221 00:22:00,800 --> 00:22:07,040 and I was like, okay, this will be good practice. You know, I'm thinking I'm not going to get this 222 00:22:07,040 --> 00:22:11,440 job. There's no way, cause I don't know anything about federal education law. And I walked in there 223 00:22:11,440 --> 00:22:16,320 and they started the interview and you know, by the end of the interview, they were asking questions 224 00:22:16,320 --> 00:22:21,600 like, uh, you know, if you have to drive for a long time out in the middle of nowhere with no 225 00:22:21,600 --> 00:22:26,400 cell reception, is that going to bother you? And I'm like, what kind of a, you know, interview 226 00:22:26,400 --> 00:22:34,320 questions is this? What did you answer? You said no, right? I was like, yeah, no worries, you know. 227 00:22:34,880 --> 00:22:41,040 Wait, now, now this, they're talking about cell phones. Makes me wonder this could not have been 228 00:22:41,040 --> 00:22:46,880 that long ago. I mean, we haven't had cell phones that long. Uh, well, or I guess, yeah, I mean, 229 00:22:46,880 --> 00:22:53,600 I didn't start working for Wyoming until like 2008. Okay. Yeah. About right around when the iPhone 230 00:22:53,600 --> 00:23:02,720 came out. So you kind of had my first Wyoming phone was like one of those blackberries with 231 00:23:02,720 --> 00:23:12,000 the actual keyboard on the phone where you have, yeah, it was interesting. Yeah. So, so by the time 232 00:23:12,000 --> 00:23:17,280 I left, I was living in Fort Collins, Colorado at the time and driving, I drove up to Cheyenne. It's 233 00:23:17,280 --> 00:23:21,680 about an hour drive, did the interview. I got halfway home and one of my references called me. 234 00:23:21,680 --> 00:23:29,120 And, uh, what I found out later is the, the Wyoming department of education had had a string of title 235 00:23:29,120 --> 00:23:34,480 three directors. Some of them knew and understood L programs, but were lousy administrators. And some 236 00:23:34,480 --> 00:23:39,840 of them were good administrators, but knew nothing or weren't, weren't functional with L programs. 237 00:23:39,840 --> 00:23:46,000 And so for somebody who, uh, you know, me who could do administration and grant budgeting and 238 00:23:46,000 --> 00:23:52,160 all of that, and knew L programs, they were like, bingo. And so, uh, that's how I ended up getting 239 00:23:52,160 --> 00:23:57,440 hired there. And we are a quick study because you know, uh, federal programs policy better than 240 00:23:57,440 --> 00:24:04,320 anybody I know personally. So picked it up. Well, I mean, I, I was able to, you know, 241 00:24:04,320 --> 00:24:09,680 spend the time in title three pretty quickly. And then the, we had our title one director leave. 242 00:24:09,680 --> 00:24:14,160 And so I had to learn title one because they moved me to that position. And then the federal 243 00:24:14,160 --> 00:24:19,040 programs division director left and they asked me to move up into that position. So then I had to 244 00:24:19,040 --> 00:24:25,200 cover all federal programs. And when I moved to transact and they changed the law, I had to read 245 00:24:25,200 --> 00:24:30,160 the entire law to, you know, because the product I worked with there is parent notices. And so 246 00:24:30,160 --> 00:24:36,320 the parent notices that the law requires are, is, are helpful to implement the law or what I work 247 00:24:36,320 --> 00:24:42,000 with. And so I had to read the entire law and, uh, you know, try to figure out what notices are 248 00:24:42,000 --> 00:24:49,440 needed to help implement this law. And when I did that, I started seeing the overlap between things 249 00:24:49,440 --> 00:24:56,240 like what are the L requirements in title one versus what's, what's outlined in title three and 250 00:24:56,240 --> 00:25:00,160 how are they working together and what are the collaboration requirements? Cause there's 251 00:25:00,160 --> 00:25:06,640 significant collaboration requirements that most people know nothing about in the law. And so I 252 00:25:06,640 --> 00:25:11,280 started like pulling things together and taking notes and putting, you know, charts together of 253 00:25:11,280 --> 00:25:16,880 information and, uh, was able to start to do presentations that talk about, Hey, what are the 254 00:25:16,880 --> 00:25:21,520 requirements for serving English foreigners in title one, you know, just title one, but forget 255 00:25:21,520 --> 00:25:26,080 title three, what does title one have to do? If you're a district that gets no title three funds, 256 00:25:26,080 --> 00:25:30,400 what do you have to do for English learners? You know, stuff like that, that, you know, people's, 257 00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:37,920 you know, don't know a lot about, and, uh, it was, it's been helpful. I talk about, I do a 258 00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:43,440 presentation on collaboration requirements for, uh, title one and title three with McKinney-Vento, 259 00:25:43,440 --> 00:25:50,320 uh, homeless assistance act. So you've got, you know, of, of the L population in the country, 260 00:25:50,320 --> 00:25:57,920 there's about 10% of our students are English learners, about 17%, maybe a little more of, uh, 261 00:25:58,480 --> 00:26:02,480 the population of students experiencing homelessness is English learners. So it's 262 00:26:02,480 --> 00:26:07,760 close to double what we see in the general population. And I call English learners 263 00:26:07,760 --> 00:26:13,680 experiencing homelessness super at risk students because of just the very nature of the, the 264 00:26:13,680 --> 00:26:18,640 barriers to education, but then the additional barriers, if they're, you know, having to be 265 00:26:18,640 --> 00:26:22,080 worried about where they're sleeping and where the next meal is going to come from and all of 266 00:26:22,080 --> 00:26:26,400 those types of things that students experiencing homelessness have to deal with. So, 267 00:26:27,360 --> 00:26:31,760 well, hey, let's, let me ask this for any superintendent or any educational leader out 268 00:26:31,760 --> 00:26:37,280 there that's listening to this right now, what is some advice that you would want to give them of, 269 00:26:37,760 --> 00:26:44,160 of course, going to NALPA's page and, but what, what it's, what's one big takeaway or one big 270 00:26:44,160 --> 00:26:49,200 piece of advice that you would want to give them right now? Because I know for a fact across the 271 00:26:49,200 --> 00:26:54,880 country, but specifically here, um, where we are located in Oklahoma, that we do have those exact 272 00:26:54,880 --> 00:27:00,640 students that are in that 10% and that 17%. And I know that we have educators that want to do the 273 00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:05,600 best that they can to help serve those students and every single aspect, but they also are not 274 00:27:05,600 --> 00:27:10,240 privy to this information as well. So what is one piece of advice that you could give them to help 275 00:27:10,240 --> 00:27:15,200 them on their journey and supporting all of their students? Yeah. When it comes to like implementing 276 00:27:15,200 --> 00:27:21,520 federal funds, federal programs, one of the big things that I always encourage is, you know, 277 00:27:21,520 --> 00:27:28,320 L directors when I speak with them, but anyone, um, is when you're doing your planning of how you're, 278 00:27:28,320 --> 00:27:34,640 what you're, what are you going to do with these funds include English learners in the upfront 279 00:27:34,640 --> 00:27:40,880 planning side of things. Because what we see happen most of the time is you get groups of people 280 00:27:40,880 --> 00:27:45,120 together and oftentimes the L coordinator isn't even involved and you get the title one director 281 00:27:45,120 --> 00:27:48,720 and the superintendent and they start planning out, how are we going to use all of our federal 282 00:27:48,720 --> 00:27:53,680 money? Yes. And then they get down the road and they get this plan in place and then they go, oh, 283 00:27:53,680 --> 00:27:58,560 we forgot about English learners. And they come back and try to retrofit things in and that never 284 00:27:58,560 --> 00:28:04,480 works well. Um, so I always say, you know, if you're, if you're doing your planning and your 285 00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:13,600 budgeting, be looking at how you can serve English learners and in the, in the whole, from the start 286 00:28:13,600 --> 00:28:19,440 so that they're part of the planning to integrate into everything you do rather than try to retrofit 287 00:28:19,440 --> 00:28:28,480 back in. You know, there, there was a big change in, from NCLB to ESSA. Yeah. And so I think 288 00:28:28,480 --> 00:28:32,800 that's a big change. And that big change is the requirements for accountability for English 289 00:28:32,800 --> 00:28:38,160 learners, for the standards and assessment for English learners, for the parent, parent meetings 290 00:28:38,160 --> 00:28:44,400 and parent communications with English learners. Those requirements moved from title three to title 291 00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:50,560 one. Title three still has the, you know, the required activities of, you know, providing 292 00:28:50,560 --> 00:28:56,000 professional learning and providing programs that help English learners attain English proficiency 293 00:28:56,000 --> 00:29:01,200 and acquire content knowledge. And under ESSA, there's a third parent, family and community 294 00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:07,120 engagement required activity. Those are still there under title three, but there's significant 295 00:29:07,120 --> 00:29:13,280 things that were moved and now are solely in title one. And when you look at that accountability 296 00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:20,880 side of things, that comes with the potential for if your students aren't meeting your English 297 00:29:20,880 --> 00:29:28,720 learners, aren't meeting academic targets and goals and, or English proficiency targets and goals. 298 00:29:28,720 --> 00:29:33,600 And it's the first that you, you have the capability of using school improvement funding. 299 00:29:33,600 --> 00:29:37,440 Yes. Because there's a pot of money set aside for school improvements. School support and 300 00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:43,200 improvement is called in, in ESSA. And it's the first time that we've actually had funding 301 00:29:43,200 --> 00:29:50,560 that can address English language proficiency in school improvement, school support and improvement. 302 00:29:50,560 --> 00:29:56,080 And so that's a huge piece that I'm another piece. I'm always talking about that. If, if you're 303 00:29:56,080 --> 00:30:00,560 have a school that's in support and improvement and you have, you know, one of the reasons is 304 00:30:00,560 --> 00:30:06,160 because your L population isn't meeting targets, you can use your school improvement funds to 305 00:30:06,160 --> 00:30:11,360 address English language proficiency. I'm so thankful that you brought that up as that having 306 00:30:11,360 --> 00:30:14,560 the language learners that we have in our districts, our multilingual learners, our 307 00:30:14,560 --> 00:30:18,480 emerging bilingual students really at the forefront of our thinking and our planning and our processes 308 00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:23,680 and what we're doing. That was also, you're, you're echoing something that I just, I've always 309 00:30:23,680 --> 00:30:30,240 believed and felt, but I was able to just attend the reading league conference in Las Vegas, 310 00:30:30,240 --> 00:30:36,880 Nevada. And it was an incredible one day full of different panelists. And that was, apart from 311 00:30:36,880 --> 00:30:41,040 many different topics though, that was kind of one of the overall themes is that, you know, typically 312 00:30:41,040 --> 00:30:46,240 we always see a little bubble on the bottom of a page and a teacher's handbook about what to do for 313 00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:50,960 your emerging bilingual student. And that's the point whenever they start thinking about what 314 00:30:50,960 --> 00:30:54,000 they're supposed to be doing, whenever what you're saying though, and suggesting and recommending 315 00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:58,800 that I want to echo as well is that you have that in the beginning of your planning process. 316 00:30:58,800 --> 00:31:03,120 We need to make sure that we can understand not just that linguistic component that's going to be 317 00:31:03,120 --> 00:31:07,680 required to help our multilingual students, but also that cultural component, right? That 318 00:31:07,680 --> 00:31:13,600 pillar of sociocultural competence. Can you speak to any part of that? Because I think, of course, 319 00:31:13,600 --> 00:31:20,160 already we have leaders across the country and here in the state of Oklahoma where we are 320 00:31:20,160 --> 00:31:27,280 considering things that we can do to help raise language proficiency levels in English for the 321 00:31:27,280 --> 00:31:31,680 students. I've been fortunate to work with districts where we're having more of a 322 00:31:31,680 --> 00:31:36,640 asset-based pedagogical conversations about the utilization of native language and 323 00:31:36,640 --> 00:31:41,520 not taking away their language, but on that on that sociocultural competence side of things. 324 00:31:41,520 --> 00:31:45,680 What's important for leaders to know as they're doing what you just recommended, 325 00:31:45,680 --> 00:31:50,320 which is considering those students in the forefront of our minds through our planning? 326 00:31:51,680 --> 00:31:55,440 Yeah, there's a couple of things that come to mind when you say that, you know, one of them 327 00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:59,280 is just if you look at the research on dual language and bilingual programs, 328 00:31:59,280 --> 00:32:04,880 students may be a little bit slower to come to full English proficiency in those programs, 329 00:32:04,880 --> 00:32:11,520 but post that they tend to perform even outperform, you know, monolingual English 330 00:32:11,520 --> 00:32:16,240 speakers when it comes to academics on the academic side. So those programs and the 331 00:32:16,240 --> 00:32:23,360 research behind those programs shows that the effectiveness of those. And when in some of the 332 00:32:23,360 --> 00:32:31,600 research I looked at when it comes to like taking assessments and, you know, how language impacts 333 00:32:31,600 --> 00:32:38,880 academics and things like that, there are a few things that are documented that actually, you know, 334 00:32:38,880 --> 00:32:45,600 have been proved to be beneficial for multilingual learners. And one of those like on assessments, 335 00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:51,280 extra time, give them extra time because they don't process things in English as far as 336 00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:57,440 you know, on an English test as fast as your monolingual English speaker might. And that goes 337 00:32:57,440 --> 00:33:05,520 back to the fact that if you're trying to bring a student to proficiency in English and ignoring 338 00:33:05,520 --> 00:33:12,160 their first language, then you're ignoring the language that they have the greatest ability to 339 00:33:12,160 --> 00:33:19,600 become literate in. And there is research that shows that if students become literate in English, 340 00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:24,640 it shows that if students become literate in their first language, those literacy skills transfer to 341 00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:30,880 English very easily. So if they're learning English as a second language and they're already 342 00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:36,320 literate in their first language, they have a much greater ability to learn English and become 343 00:33:36,320 --> 00:33:43,440 literate in English much quicker because it's less cognitively demanding to learn literacy skills in 344 00:33:43,440 --> 00:33:48,160 your first language than it is in your second language. As you guys talk about this, I think 345 00:33:48,160 --> 00:33:53,360 thinking about the educators out there that don't have the expertise that you guys have in supporting 346 00:33:53,360 --> 00:34:00,960 emergent bilingual multilingual students. What are resources and things that educators that want to 347 00:34:00,960 --> 00:34:06,880 learn more to become more involved to help some population of students but don't have experience 348 00:34:06,880 --> 00:34:12,640 with? What can they do? What are some services that NAELPA provides? And what are some other 349 00:34:12,640 --> 00:34:18,320 places that you recommend they might go to get help to help their own students? That's a great 350 00:34:18,320 --> 00:34:25,920 question. Yeah. So, and I mean, Kelly, you can probably answer some of this too. But there are 351 00:34:26,480 --> 00:34:31,440 from the NAELPA side of things, you know, if you listen to Kelly's introduction, we do a lot with 352 00:34:31,440 --> 00:34:35,680 professional learning. We have a professional learning committee. We have quarterly webinars. 353 00:34:35,680 --> 00:34:41,680 We have our annual conference, and we try to provide presentations that actually address 354 00:34:41,680 --> 00:34:49,440 the needs of states and districts. We formed an LEA committee this year, and one of their goals is 355 00:34:49,440 --> 00:34:57,280 to identify issues that are of great concern at the school district, local education agency level, 356 00:34:57,280 --> 00:35:01,840 and then to start working with our professional learning committee and our conference committee 357 00:35:01,840 --> 00:35:06,800 to make sure that some of those topics are addressed in our quarterly webinars, in our 358 00:35:06,800 --> 00:35:13,520 in our in our conference presentations. And then we also do a monthly coffee networking coffee chat. 359 00:35:13,520 --> 00:35:20,880 And so we're going to be helping those helping or trying to influence those coffee chats to be 360 00:35:20,880 --> 00:35:27,680 raising some of these topics that our LEA committee identifies as important issues related to 361 00:35:29,760 --> 00:35:35,760 English learner teachers and administrators at the at the district level. So that's that's a couple 362 00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:41,920 of things. But there's there's lots of other resources out there. You know, if you're in a 363 00:35:41,920 --> 00:35:47,120 state that belongs to an assessment consortium, probably at some point in time, there's probably 364 00:35:47,120 --> 00:35:53,040 some training that's going to be available, maybe maybe on, you know, administering the assessment, 365 00:35:53,040 --> 00:36:00,240 but maybe on other things as well. When Wyoming first joined the WIDA consortium, I put tons of 366 00:36:00,240 --> 00:36:07,600 money in to for professional learning. And it was not just on the WIDA assessment, it was on, 367 00:36:07,600 --> 00:36:12,720 you know, how do you use standards in instruction and, you know, just tons of different things that 368 00:36:12,720 --> 00:36:20,400 you can find from the assessment consortium that your state might belong to. I think it's fantastic. 369 00:36:20,400 --> 00:36:26,800 I think, you know, sometimes I mean, of course, I would always going to recommend going to the 370 00:36:26,800 --> 00:36:34,080 NAPA website and definitely utilizing the the association. But I think another amazing resource 371 00:36:34,080 --> 00:36:40,640 that we often forget to include in school districts specifically, because we're always so busy, 372 00:36:40,640 --> 00:36:45,040 there's always a deadline, there's always something going on. But I think that our biggest 373 00:36:45,040 --> 00:36:50,560 resource is just I would just recommend and encourage everyone to talk to your students 374 00:36:50,560 --> 00:36:56,480 and talk to your parents and to listen, you know, I feel like I have to remind myself often 375 00:36:56,480 --> 00:37:04,160 times what my role is and what I'm doing. And it's not to be speaking for anyone, it's to be able to 376 00:37:04,160 --> 00:37:09,840 help share resources, information, but also to create space. So the students that we are serving 377 00:37:09,840 --> 00:37:14,480 can be in communication with us to let us know what those needs are and what those families 378 00:37:14,480 --> 00:37:19,280 needs are as well, whether they be linguistic needs or cultural needs and things of that matter. 379 00:37:19,280 --> 00:37:24,400 But I think our families and our students can definitely be amazing assets and resources, 380 00:37:24,400 --> 00:37:28,320 and even better whenever it's in conjunction with the information that you were just sharing. 381 00:37:29,200 --> 00:37:34,480 Yeah, I think you're 100% right on with that. And one of the I've done a presentation on, 382 00:37:34,480 --> 00:37:40,560 you know, using culture to engage students and families. And, you know, that's that's part of 383 00:37:40,560 --> 00:37:47,520 this. That's one of the sides of things because, you know, if you are able to find connections 384 00:37:47,520 --> 00:37:52,960 within their culture that you can use in the classroom, that's huge. And a lot of times, 385 00:37:52,960 --> 00:37:58,000 the place you're going to find those, it might be students, but the parents are going to be the ones 386 00:37:58,000 --> 00:38:02,880 who are going to tell you the things that are important to them that their students know about 387 00:38:02,880 --> 00:38:08,480 their culture. And so if you can get engaged with the parents and get them to share, even, 388 00:38:09,120 --> 00:38:13,520 you know, you know, if you can vet it appropriately, get them to come in and talk about, 389 00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:18,160 hey, in our culture at this time of year, we have this going on. And this is important to us for 390 00:38:18,160 --> 00:38:24,880 these reasons. It not only reinforces that with the students of those parents, but it also, 391 00:38:25,440 --> 00:38:30,720 you know, opens the eyes and broadens the, you know, worldview of the other students in the 392 00:38:30,720 --> 00:38:34,720 classroom. Oh, definitely. I think it enriches the whole classroom, right? And even you as an 393 00:38:34,720 --> 00:38:38,480 individual, though, right? And I'm sure like, I'm sure we have very similar experiences, all of us 394 00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:43,360 sitting here at the table that our travels and our our exposure to other types of cultures and 395 00:38:43,360 --> 00:38:48,240 languages have really helped us understand ourselves and our cultures even more enriching our lives. 396 00:38:48,240 --> 00:38:53,440 And so I just think it's exciting to create space for that. I love it. Since you are since you are 397 00:38:53,440 --> 00:39:01,200 so in tune with, you know, one of your areas of expertise being policy, moving forward, is there 398 00:39:01,200 --> 00:39:05,840 anything on the horizon that you feel like educators need to be aware of as far as policy, 399 00:39:05,840 --> 00:39:11,120 what's coming out, things that excite you or things that you might be concerned about either way? 400 00:39:11,120 --> 00:39:17,920 Yeah, I mean, right now where we're at, because of everything that's happening politically at the 401 00:39:17,920 --> 00:39:23,360 national level, you know, the big thing I would be looking at right now is, hey, when is the next 402 00:39:23,360 --> 00:39:28,080 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, you know, coming down the pipe? 403 00:39:28,080 --> 00:39:34,160 We saw NCLB, now we have ESSA. ESSA was written with a five year expiration date, and it was 404 00:39:34,160 --> 00:39:43,280 passed in 2015. And so that puts it to December of 2020. And here we are, you know, two, two years 405 00:39:43,280 --> 00:39:50,880 later, a little more than two years later, two and a half years past the deadline of when Congress 406 00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:56,080 was supposed to take this up and reauthorize it again. And I would be normally going, okay, 407 00:39:56,080 --> 00:40:02,880 we need to be looking at this. But unlike NCLB, there's there's nothing that is egregious, 408 00:40:02,880 --> 00:40:09,120 in the law. NCLB had this thing where you had to gradually move your targets up so that all your 409 00:40:09,120 --> 00:40:16,080 students were proficient in your schools academically, like 100% of your students had to be by like 410 00:40:16,080 --> 00:40:21,520 2013. And when 2013 hit, they started doing these waivers and all kinds of stuff, because they knew 411 00:40:21,520 --> 00:40:26,720 it was unrealistic expectation. And it was supposed to have been reauthorized before then, 412 00:40:26,720 --> 00:40:32,880 but it didn't happen. So here we are in a situation where Congress wrote into the law that it should be 413 00:40:32,880 --> 00:40:39,520 reauthorized, you know, in 2021, and it didn't happen. And here we are in 2023, and it still 414 00:40:39,520 --> 00:40:45,360 isn't even talked about. I'm not as I'm not as concerned about it, because the way the law made 415 00:40:45,360 --> 00:40:51,200 the changes, things seem to be okay with with what we have in place, so that there isn't anything 416 00:40:51,200 --> 00:40:56,160 that's causing huge difficulties for districts and identifying all your schools as being 417 00:40:56,160 --> 00:41:00,880 improvement and things like that. You know, we were identifying our highest performing schools 418 00:41:00,880 --> 00:41:06,960 in Wyoming as, you know, in need of improvement. It was crazy. You know, so if you didn't get those 419 00:41:06,960 --> 00:41:14,080 waivers or whatever, it caused real messes. But you would think on my radar would be, hey, what's 420 00:41:14,080 --> 00:41:18,080 going to happen with this federal education law, because it's two years overdue to be, you know, 421 00:41:18,080 --> 00:41:22,880 reauthorized. Congress has too many other things on its plate. They're not even going to look at 422 00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:30,400 this law for, you know, I mean, maybe they'll look at it if Biden's elected for another term, 423 00:41:30,400 --> 00:41:38,080 you know, after after the midterms in his in his next term, if he's elected and all of that, 424 00:41:38,080 --> 00:41:42,880 they might start looking at it at that point. But I don't expect, you know, within the next 425 00:41:42,880 --> 00:41:46,800 few years, they're going to do anything. And to me, that's the big thing we need to watch, 426 00:41:46,800 --> 00:41:51,200 because that's, you know, when it comes to federal education law and policy, 427 00:41:51,200 --> 00:41:55,360 they might update some regulations, they might, you know, put out some new guidance, but there's 428 00:41:55,360 --> 00:42:02,080 nothing that's going to have a severe impact on what we're doing. You know, one of the big 429 00:42:02,080 --> 00:42:09,680 things to pay attention to is as our funds right now, the elementary and secondary school 430 00:42:10,560 --> 00:42:18,560 emergency relief funds that came through the COVID-19 bills, you know, that funding is like 431 00:42:18,560 --> 00:42:26,000 you had in the course of a year, $190 billion in education funding dumped on school districts 432 00:42:26,480 --> 00:42:33,760 and states. That's like it was more at the time, it was more than 10 times the annual funding 433 00:42:33,840 --> 00:42:40,480 that they got in addition to what they normally get in a year. But the big issue with that funding 434 00:42:40,480 --> 00:42:48,720 is it's one time funding. Once it expires, it's not going to be replaced. So, you know, 435 00:42:48,720 --> 00:42:54,640 ESSER I funds from the CARES Act have already expired. ESSER II funds expire September 30th 436 00:42:54,640 --> 00:42:59,600 this year. If you haven't committed to spend those funds by September 30th, you lose them. 437 00:42:59,600 --> 00:43:05,760 Yeah. And then ESSER III, it's September 30th next year. And there are some things going on 438 00:43:05,760 --> 00:43:10,560 with that. You know, there's a liquidation period of 120 days. So if you commit to spend it by 439 00:43:10,560 --> 00:43:17,680 September 30th, you can actually pay it out up until 120 days afterwards. And there are some 440 00:43:17,680 --> 00:43:23,920 exceptions you can get to extend that liquidation period. But if you don't commit to spend it on 441 00:43:23,920 --> 00:43:31,600 time, you lose it. Congress would have to change the law in order to extend that because the US 442 00:43:31,600 --> 00:43:37,920 Department of Education can't. They can extend the liquidation period under extenuating circumstances, 443 00:43:37,920 --> 00:43:43,200 but they cannot extend the period of availability, which ends on September 30th. 444 00:43:44,400 --> 00:43:50,560 Yeah, there's definitely, I was working in a district over the ESSER funding as well. So yeah, 445 00:43:50,560 --> 00:43:58,000 I'm gonna say definitely be paying attention to those dates and make sure that we have that money 446 00:43:58,000 --> 00:44:01,840 used in the best way possible to support all students. But of course, we're going to promote 447 00:44:01,840 --> 00:44:04,400 our multilingual and margin bilingual students for sure. 448 00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:12,640 I'm curious with, you know, we're all in support of movement to change terminology for a group of 449 00:44:12,640 --> 00:44:19,440 students that we're working with more asset based language. And I'm curious if you're hearing on the 450 00:44:19,440 --> 00:44:24,080 federal ends, like, you know, there's a talk, depending on where what region you're in, you 451 00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:29,760 know, starting to use multilingual learner emergent bilingual. But there hasn't really doesn't seem to 452 00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:36,720 be anybody's really decided on from at a federal level or what Howard we're gonna, what term we're 453 00:44:36,720 --> 00:44:42,240 going to use for this group of students, do you anticipate that federally, they'll change the name 454 00:44:42,240 --> 00:44:46,240 or is it just gonna kind of be up to the region to 455 00:44:47,520 --> 00:44:51,360 Well, right now, the way things sit and Nelpa did our 456 00:44:51,360 --> 00:44:56,160 you know, one of our committees produced a white paper on using asset based terminology, but have 457 00:44:56,160 --> 00:45:02,400 also having an asset based mindset, because the asset based mindset really is the area where 458 00:45:02,400 --> 00:45:09,280 you're going to make a difference in the the way things are done, because you can change the 459 00:45:09,280 --> 00:45:14,480 terminology all you want. But if people still have a negative attitude and, and don't view students, 460 00:45:14,480 --> 00:45:19,520 you know, with value, then you're not going to see a change in the terminology. 461 00:45:19,520 --> 00:45:24,560 You're not going to see a change in those types of things. But back to the terminology question, 462 00:45:25,360 --> 00:45:31,920 Nelpa prefers the terminology multilingual learner, but in the law, it's it's English 463 00:45:31,920 --> 00:45:37,760 learner right now. And so it used to be limited English proficient. So at some point, 464 00:45:39,120 --> 00:45:45,600 Yeah, it was in, you know, used to be English language learner too, but not in the law, 465 00:45:45,600 --> 00:45:50,080 they went right from limited English proficient to English learner, the field was using English 466 00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:54,640 language learner. And then there were some people who were like, well, isn't language redundant here? 467 00:45:54,640 --> 00:45:59,840 Right. But I mean, my favorite t shirt says Department of redundancy department. So I was okay. 468 00:46:04,080 --> 00:46:11,120 I want one of those t shirts to work. And we get so but but I'm fine with English learner, it works. 469 00:46:11,120 --> 00:46:16,720 And it's in the law. But there are some people who still consider that a deficit base because 470 00:46:16,720 --> 00:46:22,640 it focuses on the fact that they're learning English, like they're not proficient in English, 471 00:46:22,640 --> 00:46:28,880 where multilingual learner focuses on an asset side, because they're learning more than one 472 00:46:28,880 --> 00:46:34,560 language. So if you're just not proficient in a language, you're you're such and such a learner, 473 00:46:34,560 --> 00:46:40,480 you're you're not there yet. So that some people consider that a deficit based term. Whereas with 474 00:46:40,480 --> 00:46:46,720 multilingual learners, it highlights and focuses on the fact that, you know, this is someone who 475 00:46:47,760 --> 00:46:55,600 has facility in more than one language, which which is an asset. Yes. And it doesn't focus on 476 00:46:55,600 --> 00:47:02,400 just one language they don't know. And so that's why NELPA prefers that terminology. We struggle 477 00:47:02,400 --> 00:47:08,640 with emergent bilingual. And I'll tell you why I don't mind the term. It's definitely recognition. 478 00:47:08,640 --> 00:47:14,160 If you're talking about just the students. But when you start referring to programs 479 00:47:15,040 --> 00:47:20,080 for those students as emergent bilingual programs, and the vast majority of them, 480 00:47:20,080 --> 00:47:26,400 the vast majority of them's goal is to move them to English proficiency and not provide any support 481 00:47:26,400 --> 00:47:31,440 for the first language. That really isn't a bilingual program. And if you're calling it an 482 00:47:31,440 --> 00:47:35,520 emergent bilingual program, and you're not supporting the first language, then there's 483 00:47:35,520 --> 00:47:42,000 there's some discrepancy in congruence and in saying things like that. So while I like the term 484 00:47:42,000 --> 00:47:48,640 emergent bilingual, the fact that when you use it to refer to programs for these students, 485 00:47:48,640 --> 00:47:53,040 it causes problems from my perspective, where multilingual learner. 486 00:47:54,960 --> 00:48:01,600 It doesn't necessarily cause those problems. Only problem I see multilingual learner pose 487 00:48:01,600 --> 00:48:07,040 it would be the fact that, I mean, I guess in a way I consider myself multilingual learner. So, 488 00:48:08,400 --> 00:48:13,760 you know, how do you differentiate between the group of students that you have to have a term 489 00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:19,760 for for funding purposes, you know, I mean, and I think if we all are in agreement that those that's 490 00:48:19,760 --> 00:48:26,160 we're calling that group of students multilingual, but I also feel the nuance in a nuanced way. 491 00:48:26,160 --> 00:48:30,320 I'm a multilingual learner. A lot of people that are not necessarily that group of students that 492 00:48:30,320 --> 00:48:35,760 are getting funding are also multilingual learners. Yeah, that is one piece to take into 493 00:48:35,760 --> 00:48:43,360 consideration. And to think about it, you know, you have some dual language bilingual education 494 00:48:43,360 --> 00:48:48,480 programs that have monolingual English speakers and monolingual other language speakers. 495 00:48:49,440 --> 00:48:53,600 And those students in that program would be all called multilingual learners. 496 00:48:54,640 --> 00:48:59,760 And if you look at the way things were handled under NCLB when we had limited English proficient, 497 00:48:59,760 --> 00:49:05,920 people stopped using limited English proficient. Even though it was the terminology in the law, 498 00:49:05,920 --> 00:49:10,480 the field generally moved to English language learner because it limited English proficient 499 00:49:10,480 --> 00:49:17,600 was so deficit based that it was just like totally like, hey, you know, thumbs down on this group, 500 00:49:17,600 --> 00:49:23,760 they're limited, you know, kind of thing. So so the field under NCLB, you know, everyone was 501 00:49:23,760 --> 00:49:28,080 talked about English language learners and they avoided the use of limited English proficient. 502 00:49:28,080 --> 00:49:33,920 Although in the law, that defined the group that received those funds was it was labeled 503 00:49:33,920 --> 00:49:39,600 limited English proficient. So currently in the law, we have this label English learner. 504 00:49:40,960 --> 00:49:47,280 So we can talk about in the field and use the terminology that encourages and promotes an 505 00:49:47,280 --> 00:49:53,120 asset based point of view and a mindset of multilingual learner. While still you'll hear 506 00:49:53,120 --> 00:49:57,520 me switch back and forth between English learner and multilingual learner, especially when I'm 507 00:49:57,520 --> 00:50:03,280 talking policy, because that's the term that's used in the law, English learner. So when I'm 508 00:50:03,280 --> 00:50:11,040 talking about that specific subgroup in the ESSA, you know, as defined in ESSA, I typically will 509 00:50:11,040 --> 00:50:14,480 call it the English learner group. The English learner subgroup are, you know, the English 510 00:50:14,480 --> 00:50:20,000 learner students that are served by these, you know, Title I English learner requirements, 511 00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:25,600 because that's the term in the law. But when I'm talking about the students, I like and I prefer 512 00:50:25,600 --> 00:50:32,080 the term multilingual learner when talking about it, because that promotes an asset based view 513 00:50:32,080 --> 00:50:38,000 of those students. And it isn't reflective of the policy. So we've got a term in policy, 514 00:50:38,000 --> 00:50:45,280 English learner, that we can use. So but, you know, by calling students multilingual learners 515 00:50:45,280 --> 00:50:52,080 that are their first language is something other than English, or their first language is 516 00:50:52,080 --> 00:50:58,080 English, it also puts those students on an even ground. They're, they're both both of those 517 00:50:58,080 --> 00:51:01,920 students, the monolingual English speaker and the monolingual Spanish speaker, they're both 518 00:51:01,920 --> 00:51:06,400 multilingual learners, if they're in a dual language or bilingual program. I think that the 519 00:51:06,400 --> 00:51:10,160 number one takeaway that I get from your message, though, is that we really have to be cognizant 520 00:51:10,160 --> 00:51:15,040 about our own mindsets. And if they're asset based or not, regardless of what we're saying, 521 00:51:15,040 --> 00:51:19,680 and if it's in the law or not in the law, etc. But I really appreciate you bringing that point to the 522 00:51:19,680 --> 00:51:24,960 surface is that we need to come in as educators, just as humans and looking at everyone else is 523 00:51:24,960 --> 00:51:30,000 having an asset that they bring to the table, you know, really expanding upon people's backgrounds, 524 00:51:30,000 --> 00:51:34,240 because they have value and they have worth, you have value and you have worth, just the same way 525 00:51:34,240 --> 00:51:38,320 that our students do regardless of the language that they speak, how many languages they speak, 526 00:51:38,320 --> 00:51:46,240 or even language proficiency levels. Yeah, so when you let me point this topic is, you know, Nalpa 527 00:51:46,240 --> 00:51:51,520 has a strong working relationship with the US Department of Education and the Office of English 528 00:51:51,520 --> 00:51:56,800 Language Acquisition, you know, considers us their partner organization a lot of ways. And 529 00:51:57,520 --> 00:52:02,080 we have a Secretary of Education who was an English English learner, multilingual learner. 530 00:52:02,640 --> 00:52:10,400 And when you hear him talk, when he's talking about students, he's talking about multi, he uses the 531 00:52:10,400 --> 00:52:14,960 term multilingual learners, and you only hear him reference English learner, when it's something 532 00:52:14,960 --> 00:52:21,760 related to the law or policy. So he, as our Secretary of Education has switched to using 533 00:52:22,320 --> 00:52:30,800 terminology that's more asset based when he can. So to me, that's a huge, you know, confirmation 534 00:52:30,800 --> 00:52:35,680 that this we're moving in the right direction. Absolutely. I'm very appreciative of him doing 535 00:52:35,680 --> 00:52:42,320 that as well. It's been noticed for sure. I also appreciate his LGBTQ pen that he wears as an 536 00:52:42,320 --> 00:52:48,960 openly gay man. So thank you so much to our US Secretary of Education for sure, for really being 537 00:52:48,960 --> 00:52:54,640 inclusive in that aspect. With all of this, I really want to make sure to ask this one question, 538 00:52:54,640 --> 00:53:00,080 but what as we're coming to a close here, what advice do you have for listeners who are interested 539 00:53:00,080 --> 00:53:04,720 in fostering cultural connections in their communities and their schools? And what can they 540 00:53:04,720 --> 00:53:08,400 do to take action? What can they really just do to jump in and to make a difference? 541 00:53:08,400 --> 00:53:12,320 Well, I mean, there's a number of things that we've talked about, but definitely engage your 542 00:53:12,320 --> 00:53:19,600 students and especially their parents. One of the principles that I share when you're working with 543 00:53:20,160 --> 00:53:27,120 students and families that are from another culture is just because it's different doesn't 544 00:53:27,120 --> 00:53:36,320 mean it's wrong. When I had friends who worked in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and some of the low 545 00:53:36,320 --> 00:53:44,160 lying swampy areas, and they brought some friends over from the States to try to help build some 546 00:53:44,160 --> 00:53:49,680 kind of building for this village. And they came in there with their shovels and their picks to 547 00:53:49,680 --> 00:53:58,640 this swampy ground. And you pull a shovel out of slop and it slops back in. So the hole that 548 00:53:58,640 --> 00:54:04,640 you want to be six inches around ends up 40 inches around and you're still not that 549 00:54:04,640 --> 00:54:12,320 three feet deep you wanted it to be. And so they were like trying to do this. And so somebody from 550 00:54:12,320 --> 00:54:17,760 the village came over and was like, what are you doing? And they were like, well, we're trying to 551 00:54:17,760 --> 00:54:23,760 dig this hole. And he was like, well, why are you doing it that way? He went over, got a machete, 552 00:54:23,760 --> 00:54:29,760 cut a piece of bamboo down, cut it off at one of the joints, and then split it in four ways at that 553 00:54:29,760 --> 00:54:38,400 joint. So that when you pushed it in the ground, it would expand, collect the dirt, pull it back up. 554 00:54:38,400 --> 00:54:44,800 So you could dig a hole like that in the dirt straight down without having all of this issue. 555 00:54:44,800 --> 00:54:51,840 So this village guy who would have walked into maybe a situation in the US with a stick of bamboo 556 00:54:51,840 --> 00:54:58,480 trying to dig a hole, it didn't work there, but it worked where he's from. So just because he 557 00:54:58,480 --> 00:55:04,640 is different doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong. And so from our perspective, we would think you 558 00:55:04,640 --> 00:55:10,400 need a shovel to do this job or a pick or a post hole digger, but from them it was a piece of bamboo. 559 00:55:10,400 --> 00:55:19,920 And you'll see that a lot in interactions with parents and families that they might see 560 00:55:20,560 --> 00:55:26,080 us doing things differently and wonder why. And helping to explain that to them is huge. 561 00:55:26,080 --> 00:55:32,640 And the other piece is assume goodwill. I think when you're working with parents, especially, 562 00:55:34,160 --> 00:55:41,200 not a lot of parents come to the classroom thinking, I'm going to anger my students teacher. 563 00:55:41,200 --> 00:55:47,680 This is my goal in this meeting. That's not the perspective that they come with. They're coming, 564 00:55:47,680 --> 00:55:51,680 they're scared, they're coming from their own cultural perspective and where things are 565 00:55:51,680 --> 00:55:57,200 different. The educational system is different. We have a Title III immigrant sub-grant to help 566 00:55:57,840 --> 00:56:02,240 parents who come from other cultures where the educational system is different to understand the 567 00:56:02,240 --> 00:56:08,160 US educational system. That's part of the goal of that program. And so helping parents understand 568 00:56:08,160 --> 00:56:12,880 the educational system and how it works and why do we have an immigrant grant? Is that because of 569 00:56:12,880 --> 00:56:20,800 my immigration status? No, it's not. It's totally unrelated to immigration status. But parents don't 570 00:56:20,800 --> 00:56:24,720 know that, so we have to make sure that they know and understand the reasons why we're asking 571 00:56:24,720 --> 00:56:33,040 certain questions. So making sure that you have a really good connection with your parents so that 572 00:56:33,040 --> 00:56:37,360 they can know and understand exactly what you're talking about is really important. 573 00:56:37,360 --> 00:56:44,640 I agree 100%. Thank you for that reminder. Do you have any other questions, Dr. Tribble? 574 00:56:46,080 --> 00:56:51,280 No, that's been a great... I mean, I do have other questions, but I can tell this could go on for... 575 00:56:51,280 --> 00:56:52,080 We could talk all day. 576 00:56:52,080 --> 00:56:57,600 Yeah. And it's been a lot of fun. I wish we had more time to carry on, but we'll have to have you 577 00:56:57,600 --> 00:57:02,640 back to tell us more stories. Sounds like you've got a really lot of interesting adventures. 578 00:57:02,640 --> 00:57:06,480 Internationally, that would be fun to talk about that definitely apply to... 579 00:57:06,480 --> 00:57:07,760 Yeah, I'll have to have you back. 580 00:57:07,760 --> 00:57:13,600 How it's changed your life and on a personal level and allowed you to provide support here 581 00:57:13,600 --> 00:57:19,760 within the United States for the minority communities that we work with. So thank you so much. 582 00:57:19,760 --> 00:57:24,880 I'm incredibly thankful to you, Dr. Tribble, for introducing me to Dr. David Holbrook. And 583 00:57:24,880 --> 00:57:29,600 sincerely, ever since I got to meet you, get to know you over the last few weeks, I've been 584 00:57:29,600 --> 00:57:34,000 a sincerely ever since I got to meet you, get to know you over at La Cosecha Conference in New 585 00:57:34,000 --> 00:57:38,880 Mexico and also at NAELPA Conference this last year in Portland, Oregon. I've really been doing 586 00:57:38,880 --> 00:57:44,480 a lot of more research on NAELPA and I've learned so much. And so from someone who's on the ground 587 00:57:44,480 --> 00:57:47,760 working with school districts, I want to say thank you for sharing all the information that 588 00:57:47,760 --> 00:57:52,080 you have, because it's allowed me to be a better leader and educator and just person overall, 589 00:57:52,080 --> 00:57:56,160 what I try to do. So thank you so much sincerely for that. And I hope that, you know, I just respect 590 00:57:56,160 --> 00:57:57,680 you so much. Thank you. 591 00:57:57,680 --> 00:58:01,680 Well, thanks. And congrats to you all, but conferred Dr. Kelly there. 592 00:58:02,480 --> 00:58:03,200 Thank you very much. 593 00:58:03,200 --> 00:58:05,600 Oh yeah, your last name Forbes, is that it? 594 00:58:05,600 --> 00:58:07,200 Yep. Dr. Kelly Forbes. 595 00:58:07,200 --> 00:58:15,520 Yep. Dr. Kelly Forbes, almost. Yep. All but conferred. You passed your, you know, 596 00:58:16,160 --> 00:58:17,440 the hardest exam. 597 00:58:17,440 --> 00:58:17,920 Yes. 598 00:58:17,920 --> 00:58:22,720 Yeah. You passed your defense. So now it's just the waiting. So congrats on that. 599 00:58:22,720 --> 00:58:25,920 Well, thank you so much. And to all of our listeners, thank you so much for spending 600 00:58:25,920 --> 00:58:31,360 this time with us. And again, we will see you next time on Cultural Connections Lab. And one more big 601 00:58:31,360 --> 00:58:35,840 thank you to our guest today, Dr. David Holbrook. We wish you all the best. And again, thank you. 602 00:58:35,840 --> 00:58:56,480 Thank you.