The Voice of the Office of English Language Acquisition

This month, Dr. Lawrence welcomes the Deputy Secretary and Director for the Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) at the U.S. Department of Education, Montserrat Garibay. Follow along as Ms. Garibay shares her journey from being an undocumented immigrant from Mexico City to becoming a U.S. citizen, National Board-Certified teacher, with a Master of Education from the University of Texas-Austin. She has proudly served as a bilingual pre-kindergarten teacher. Dr. Lawrence and Ms. Garibay dive into some key opportunities, as well as, critical challenges that English/multilingual learners face in the U.S. education system and how OELA and the U.S. Department of Education are working together to address those challenges and leverage opportunities for collaboration