S8/E1: Advancing Equity in Professional Learning for Educators of Multilingual Learners with Silvia Romero-Johnson and Mariana Castro

How might we design and ensure access to equitable professional learning opportunities, specifically to address the unique needs of multilingual learners? What are some tools that can be used to monitor the progress of educators through professional learning and how do we measure its impact on student progress and learning? What are some strategies to design and implement equitable professional learning opportunities that are both introspective and connected to practice? We discuss these questions and much more with Silvia Romero-Johnson and Mariana Castro, authors of the new book, Advancing Equity in Dual Language Education: A Guide for Leaders. One note on the title - Silvia and Mariana define leaders with a wide lens. The information and resources shared in the book and in this episode are relevant and useful for any educator working with multilingual learners - particularly in dual-language programs. We would actually go so far as to say that it is useful for ALL educators. In this interview, we focused on one chapter of the book specifically dedicated to equitable professional learning. You can read access more resources, including a transcript of this episode, on the accompanying blog post on our learning community.  Find the episode transcript here.  Guest Bios Mariana Castro, Ph.D. is Deputy Director of the Wisconsin Center of Education Research at the University of Wisconsin Madison and a leader and researcher at WIDA, a project with the mission of advancing the academic achievement of multilingual learners. Castro has served the field of education as a science teacher, an ESL and bilingual educator and administrator, as a teacher educator and as a researcher. Her work as a qualitative researcher has focused on issues at the intersection of policy and practice in the education of multilingual learners.  Castro’s research on the language practices and language development of multilingual learners has provided a foundation to her work leading the development of language standards for K-12 students and early years, in both English and Spanish.  Dr. Silvia Romero-Johnson is currently serving as Director of Bilingual Programs and Instructional Equity in the Verona Area School District in Verona, WI. She has served in the education field in a variety of capacities including: Interim Chief Academic Officer and Assistant Superintendent for the Office of English Learners in the Boston Public Schools in Boston MA. As the Executive Director of the Office of Multilingual and Global Education in the Madison Metropolitan School District in Madison, WI, she led the district’s transition from transitional bilingual education to dual language immersion education. She was the principal of Nuestro Mundo Community School, MMSD’s first two-way bilingual immersion charter school.