S7/E5: Promoting Collaboration to Better Support ELs in Content Classes with Kent Dwyer and Gina Lappe (Part 1)

What are some easy ways that content teachers and ELL specialists can collaborate to better support their multilingual learners? How can schools and teaching teams build out systems for housing key instructional resources to support practices like scaffolding? What can educators do to ensure multilingual learners have equitable access to high-quality instructional materials and content - particularly in STEM courses? We discuss these questions and more in Part 1 of a two-part series with Gina (Lahpay) Lappe and Kent Dwyer. One key to their success has been intentional and sustained collaboration - which as many of us have experienced, can be more difficult than it seems. we’ll get into how they went about creating systems that made it easier for them and their colleagues to work together to support all learners. Gina Lappe is heading into her 10th year teaching inquiry-based science. She started teaching in Great Smoky Mountains National Park before heading into the classroom at an Expeditionary Learning Charter School in North Carolina. She currently teaches middle school science at an international school in South Korea. She is passionate about using science as a pathway to get students curious about and connected with the world around them. Please feel free to reach out to Gina via email at [email protected] and Instagram @Lappe_labs. Kent Dwyer has been an educator for 17 years, focusing primarily on language acquisition. He taught Spanish in Pennsylvania for 11 years, serving as a demonstration teacher at Julia Reynolds Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School and then as a master teacher at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School. From 2016 to 2021, Kent worked in international education to support English language acquisition, first in Qatar and then in South Korea. Kent has facilitated professional development sessions on topics including digital storytelling for language acquisition, tiered units of instruction, differentiated instruction, interpersonal language use within the classroom, data-driven decision making, integrated performance assessments, and the use of technology to promote communication. He can be reached through his professional instagram at kent.dwyer or via email at [email protected]. Here is a link to their Edutopia article. Here is a link to Choice Words. Here is a link to Fluency through TPR Storytelling. You can find additional resources and episode takeaways on our ELL Community page at ellevationeducation.com/ellcommunity. If you haven’t done so already, we invite you to join our ELL Community while you’re there so you get weekly resources, strategies and tips from that you can use right away.